20130710

The next frontier of quantum communications


Listening to Rupert Ursin's closing talk on Free-Space Quantum Communication towards Satellites


Over the last week, we shared the sunset from the summit of Mauna Kea, tracked binary star clusters and shining nebulae from telescopes atop the mountain, joined a round of native Hawaiian chants to give thanks to the land, the jungle and our ancestors in a hand-built, solar-powered treehouse deep in the rainforest—snorkeled through the same crystalline waters as the sea turtles and dolphins in Waikoloa Bay, enjoyed fresh coconut water and enchanted conversations on quantum mechanics and the nature of reality as whirling dervishes, beautiful dancers flitted around us at the naked drum circle of Kehena's black sand beachand took in arms-length views of active cliffside lava flows and giant, billowing sulfuric gas clouds, violently heaving and shaking the ground beneath our feet, erupting into massive steam columns as they crashed into the ocean, slicing through the thin ribbon of coastline interface between land and sea, dead in the middle of the night, miles from civilization ... 


The Next Frontier of Quantum Communications — with Richard Hughes, Tim Ralph, Wolfgang Tittel, Jaewan Kim and Masahide Sasaki at the IEEE Quantum Photonics and Communications Meeting, Hilton Waikoloa, Hawaii