Scientists have proved the possibility of quantum communication at a distance measured in hundreds of thousands of light years.
The problem of fast communication in space limits humanity in many ways and forces it to tread on the Ground. So, even an electromagnetic wave takes from 3 to 22 minutes to walk from the Earth to Mars — in this case, what kind of stable connection can we talk about if humanity decides to leave its native system and move to another? In the future, we will need new ways of communication based on quantum entanglement, and scientists have shown that aliens, if they exist, can already use this type of communication to communicate.
The researchers performed calculations of the motion of X-rays in a vacuum to test the potential decoherence (destruction of the quantum state). The authors of the new work determined that if photons – particles of light — were used as quantum particles, they could be transmitted over distances of at least hundreds of thousands of light years. It’s bigger than the entire Milky Way galaxy.
This is partly due to the fact that the average density of matter in space is very small, and this “cleaner” environment means less likely to interfere with a change in the quantum state. Even the gravitational pull will not be enough to knock the quantum communication network off course.
“It is likely that photon—mediated quantum coupling can be established at interstellar distances, in particular for photons in the X-ray region below the mass of an electron,” the researchers write in their paper.
The fact that alien life forms can use quantum communication to communicate with each other or try to contact us is, of course, pure speculation, but at the same time it gives astronomers another potential sign of life that they can track.