What is the killer app, the triumphant application for the quantum internet, is the question from the online audience. We are involved in the launch of QuTech's "Quantum Network Explorer". The research institute in Delft, the Netherlands, is working on a network with which quantum information can be exchanged securely. At some point such a quantum internet will connect quantum computers, in Europe and worldwide. Wojciech Kozlowski, one of the quantum network engineers, answers the initial question: “You have to help us develop the killer app.” The killer app of the good old Internet, the World Wide Web, or WWW for short, came relatively late.

With the quantum network explorer launched on Friday, everyone should now be able to try out how such a quantum network could work.

At best, this should bring ideas together for what they are needed for.

Thinking up applications for it now is like trying to invent zoom, e-mail or online banking before the classic Internet was born in 1969.

Where would the level of development of the quantum Internet be located relative to this?

According to Stephanie Wehner, leader of a quantum internet research group at QuTech, in the 1950s or 1960s.

The hardware problems of a quantum network have not yet been solved.

Well, that hasn't stopped a tech optimist from finding fantastic applications with quantum computers: they are supposed to organize road traffic, simulate climate change, accelerate the development of drugs - even if it is sometimes not clear why quantum computers should be suitable for exactly this .

If the quantum internet gets even a little of this imagination and this advance ingenuity, it might be enough for the killer app.