Hyperspace wants to build and test the tech needed to make secure quantum communication possible between Europe and Canada.

Guglielmo Marconi was just 27 years old when he did something that changed the world. The Italian-Irish inventor, after years of toiling away at his idea, sailed to Newfoundland in Canada, to receive the world’s first radio transmission from across the Atlantic – an ‘S’ in Morse code, from Cornwall, England via Clifden, Co Galway – in 1901.

And the next year, Marconi sent the first wireless signal back to England. His work brought him a Nobel Prize and ushered in a new age of worldwide electronic communication, one that we exist and thrive on.

More than 120 years – and several major scientific advancements later (including the internet and miles-long fibre optic undersea cables) – scientists are attempting to send another signal across the Atlantic. But this time, it’s a quantum beam.

Hyperspace is an international scientific project backed by EU Horizon Europe and the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. The EU has contributed nearly €2m to this project.

It brings together scientists from leading research institutes across Germany, France, Italy, Austria and Canada to develop the technology to create a secure, cross-continental quantum connection via satellites – opening the door to a global quantum internet, one that’s also unhackable.

China’s Micius satellite has previously transmitted quantum signals between Asia and Europe, but Hyperspace hopes to be the first to do this over the Atlantic.

“Hyperspace is working on a way to generate totally secure encryption keys at a distance through space using quantum technology,” said project coordinator Dr Fabian Steinlechner.

“One day, this could connect entire continents with communication that’s impossible to hack. Today, Europe and Canada are building the foundation for that future by testing how we can transmit quantum signals between satellites and the ground.”

Keeping hackers out

Quantum computing utilises the unique behaviours of quantum physics to its advantage, giving it exponential power to compute at a scale much faster than traditional computing. The tech is poised to revolutionise basically every major field, from finance to medicine.

However, this also presents opportunities for bad actors, some of whom may want to use the technology to hack current encryption standards.

Companies such as IBM are already upgrading their enterprise systems with the aim of providing quantum-safe technology, which the company says should protect its clients from bad faith actors.

To develop their technology, Hyperspace scientists are using quantum entanglement – a quantum phenomenon where two subatomic particles remain connected and identical, even if separated by a huge distance (think in light years).

The renowned scientist Albert Einstein described this as “spooky action at a distance”.

Plus, according to another one of quantum physics’ strange laws, the properties of these particles remain unknown until they are measured. This means that quantum technology can be used to generate secure and random encryption keys that are impossible to copy or spy on.

These quantum signals can be sent through fibre-optic cables or even beamed through open space, and if anyone attempts to intecept them, the signals break, exposing the bad actor.

Although a space-based quantum internet is still in its infancy, the scientists are looking into shorter, terrestrial free space optical links.

Moreover, the team is also exploring how to encode multiple qubits onto a single photon, which would basically pack more information at once, making communication even more effective. This is called ‘high-dimensional entanglement’.

“High-dimensional entanglement also makes the whole system tougher. If there’s interference (like noise or hacking attempts), the signal keeps going strong because it’s spread across more channels.” Steinlechner said.

“In short, it means faster speeds, greater security, and more information packed into every pulse of quantum light.”

Hyperspace’s goal is to build and test the tech needed to make secure quantum communication between Europe and Canada possible – from advanced photon sources to protocols for high-dimensional entanglement.

While, in the long term, they want to build towards a quantum internet.

The Hyperspace consortium, which is set to conclude this September, consists of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering in Germany, CEA-Leti in France, Vienna Institute of Technology in Austria, the Universities of Padua and Pavia in Italy, and the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.