Four years, four months, and twelve days ago, a photon—a particle of light—left Proxima Centauri, the closest star to us. Just now, it finally arrived at Earth.
This photon, and others that have come with it, could reveal incredible secrets about the planets that orbit the red dwarf star—such as if they’re habitable, or even inhabited. However, with current instruments, we’re not able to tease out this information.
That could one day change with technology called quantum networks.
Quantum networks are like the classical networks we use in everyday life to transmit and share digital information. However, quantum networks use quantum bits, or qubits, which encode information in a way that is utterly foreign to the classical way of thinking. Qubits use tricks from the weird world of quantum mechanics and are fundamentally different from classical computing bits. And when employed on quantum networks, they are radically more powerful.
