Quantum Mechanics Might Be a Secret Key to Secure Communication
4/28/202627 min
Together, Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard figured out how to use the laws of quantum physics to keep secret messages safe from eavesdroppers. Their efforts have earned them one of the highest awards in computing and a $1 million prize. On this episode of The Quanta Podcast, host Samir Patel speaks with staff writer Ben Brubaker about this year’s Turing Prize winners, and some of the most important concepts in quantum information science. This topic was covered in a recent column for Quanta Magazine.
Each week on The Quanta Podcast, Quanta Magazine editor in chief Samir Patel speaks with the people behind the award-winning publication to navigate through some of the most important and mind-expanding questions in science and math.
Audio coda by Charles Bennett/IBM
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First 90 secondsSamir Patel· Host0:00
[instrumental music] There's been a steady trickle of reports of innovations in quantum computing, including one we recently reported on in Quanta that seem to suggest that the era of these really, really powerful, though somewhat limited machines could be on the way. And one of the things that they could potentially do that traditional computers can't is crack today's best digital security methods. These methods are built mathematically on hard problems, problems that quantum computers are well-suited to solve potentially. And this means that we need other strategies for securing information and communication, and that drives us right back into the world of quantum mechanics that makes quantum computing possible in the first place. [percussive music] Welcome to the Quanta Podcast, where we explore the frontiers of fundamental science and math. I'm Samir Patel, editor-in-chief of Quanta Magazine. Recently, we reported on the A.M. Turing Award. It's one of the biggest honors in computer science, and it was given for foundational work that started decades ago, before quantum computers were remotely a thing, that laid the foundations for the kind of quantum cryptography, quantum-based communication that we need now. Our computer science writer, Ben Brubaker, reported on the award