The tiny folding bike with electric motor has Anton Zeilinger under his arm as he enters his office. "I'm an avid user of modern technology," smiles the 73-year-old quantum physicist and takes off his helmet. In his case, the love of technology is almost mandatory. For decades, Zeilinger has been researching at the University of Vienna on a field that could shape the lives of future generations: quantum computers, quantum cryptography and quantum teleportations.
Data is then no longer sent from one device to another with today's conventional methods such as radio, but reconstructed as if by ghost hand at the receiver - eavesdropping and theft-proof.
Awarded many awards and always in the narrow circle of candidates for the Nobel Prize for Physics, the Austrian is more convinced than ever: The "ghostly long-range effect" of particles, once described by Albert Einstein and at the same time fundamentally doubted, will form the basis of the technology of the future. "I am confident because we have found no fundamental reason that it should not go," said Zeilinger.
His field of research has earned the nickname "Mr. Beam" based on the legendary "Beamen" in the science fiction series "Star Trek". When he succeeded in 1997 in this teleportation - the transport of the state of a light particle - he became a man in demand worldwide. In the meantime, the entanglement of particles - that is to say, the information of the one without transfer channel to the other - has already worked out between space and earth over a distance of about 1200 kilometers. On Earth itself, the longest distance is limited to 144 kilometers due to atmospheric disturbances.
The Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), which Zeilinger heads, is one of the hotspots of this research worldwide. "It's colder here than in space," says aspiring quantum physicist Claudia Heindler, 24, pointing to the maze of pipes, hoses, and apparatus in the lab. Here, research is not done on photons, but on atoms. For this purpose, a quantum gas of about one million atoms is generated in an environment that is only a minuteness above the absolute zero of minus 273 degrees.
Modeling chemical bonds
According to Heindler, the particles in the condensate should be crossed by collision. "We vaccinate the particles, so to speak." In this way, fraternally connected, one half of the particles will always assume the state of the other.
Very real perspectives were recently revealed by a quantum computer in research at the University of Innsbruck. There, a promising path to modeling chemical bonds and reactions was achieved. "Even the largest supercomputers struggle to model anything but the simplest chemistry, and quantum computers that simulate nature provide a whole new way to understand matter," says researcher Cornelius Hempel. That could have groundbreaking consequences for medicine, but also in materials science.
"I was immediately fascinated"
In all this research, China plays an important role, among other things by launching the first quantum communication satellite "Micius". Ironically, because of its censorship and surveillance notorious Middle Kingdom is a key player in tap-proof communication? For Zeilinger this is not a contradiction. The extremely strategic China has a great interest that thanks to quantum technology future industrial espionage will no longer be possible, says the scientist. "You want to be a technological avant-garde."
Zeilinger himself, as a student, came across quantum physics that was barely comprehensible to common sense. "I was immediately fascinated," recalls the man with the white beard. The enthusiasm was reflected in the fact that he skipped all lectures and preferred to deal intensively with the literature in his own studies.
So the topic of education has remained one of his main concerns. "I would start a humanistic grammar school in every city," he says. The world as well as the fundamental beliefs and insights of the Greeks and Romans had left their mark on him. "School should serve education and not education."
Zeilinger compares the current state of application of quantum technology with the invention of the first microchip 50 years ago. "Nobody had the slightest idea of the iPhone back then." One wish he has but all fans of "Star Trek" beat out of his head: The beaming of whole people will never be possible. "This is complete nonsense in the face of the big lump."