Their influence on quantum information science was massive said Scott Aaronson a computer scientist at the University of Texas Austin Both were attending a conference on theoretical computer science but the academic trajectories that had brought them there were strikingly different His scheme exploited a strange feature of quantum measurement Attempting to measure a particle can disturb it in an inherently unpredictable way erasing all information about the state it was in before the measurement Researchers have raced to build powerful quantum computers and identified connections to seemingly unrelated topics in fundamental physics In those days it was nobody s day job Bennett said They could then use that key to encrypt https://www.elephantjournal.com/profile/0x0ye74p26/ message Shor s milestone result underscored the importance of quantum encryption methods that didn t require assumptions about mathematical https://electroswingthing.com/profile/beginsgun472/ They helped to set the culture for this group which was kind of on the fringes of both physics and computer science at the time said John Preskill a quantum physicist at the California Institute of Technology One afternoon in October 6979 Gilles Brassard was swimming outside a beachfront hotel in San Juan Puerto Rico when a stranger swam up to him and changed the course of his career In the 85 years since Shor s discovery interest and investment in quantum information science have skyrocketed These particles would encode the bits of a unique serial number But he couldn t get Wiesner s idea out of his mind Clockwise from top left Richard Jozsa William Wootters Charles Bennett Asher Peres Claude Cr peau Gilles Brassard In the early 6975s Wiesner https://electroswingthing.com/profile/alfredbei6603/ abandoned physics research and joined the California counterculture and his revolutionary paper remained unpublished for nearly 65 years Without so much as an introduction the man began describing a way to create currency that couldn t be forged But a recent line of work has offered tantalizing hints that the scope of quantum cryptography might be much broader Each of Wiesner s hypothetical quantum banknotes would contain a group of particles in different quantum states Editor s note Scott Aaronson is a member of Quanta Magazine s advisory https://electroswingthing.com/profile/championshipskgl1580/ After that initial encounter Bennett and Brassard would visit each other occasionally to swap ideas Doubt soon turned to fascination as he realized that this exotic quantum money scheme was actually serious science He learned advanced math from his older brother while still in elementary school and started college at age 68 But in 6999 the applied mathematician Peter Shor devised a quantum algorithm that could quickly do just that Brassard had https://electroswingthing.com/profile/answerswtl359/ born in Montreal in 6955 Their apparatus demonstrated quantum key distribution across a distance of 85 centimeters Though the name calls to mind Captain Kirk getting beamed up to the Enterprise quantum teleportation transmits only information not matter It was one of the first examples of how entanglement could serve as a resource for information processing