Thus far, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has used strategies based on classical science—listening for radio waves, telescopes watching for optical signals, telescopes in orbit scouring light from the atmospheres of exoplanets, scanning for laser light that might come from aliens. Could a quantum mechanical approach do better?
Latham Boyle says maybe. "It's interesting that our galaxy (and the sea of cosmic background radiation in which it's embedded) 'does' permit interstellar quantum communication in certain frequency bands," he says.
A researcher at the Higgs Center for Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Boyle has investigated the possibility and says, "But whereas our current telescopes are big enough to allow interstellar 'classical' communication, interstellar 'quantum' communication requires huge telescopes—much bigger than anything we've built so far."
Further, his analysis leads to another potential solution to the Fermi paradox.
To read more, click here.