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Technology

Quantum network joins four people together for encrypted messaging

By Chelsea Whyte

12 December 2018

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Photons could soon be zooming all over quantum networks

Aeriform/Getty

The quantum internet is starting small, but growing. Researchers have created a network that lets four users communicate simultaneously through channels secured by the laws of quantum physics, and they say it could easily be scaled up.

Sören Wengerowsky at the University of Vienna and his colleagues devised a network that uses quantum key distribution (QKD) to keep messages secure. The general principle of QKD is that two photons are entangled, meaning their quantum properties are linked.

Two users receive a photon each and use them to generate a…

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