Starlight Could Really Be a Vast Alien Quantum Internet, Physicist Proposes

Starlight Could Really Be a Vast Alien Quantum Internet, Physicist Proposes

Sarah Wells

What if the universe is a giant alien chatroom, and we just can't understand it?

Humanity has been attempting to make contact with aliens for decades, whether that means sending a golden record with our greatest hits into space aboard Voyager or searching the cosmic microwave background radiation for hints of life. 
But according to a new hypothesis proposed by Terry Rudolph, a professor of quantum physics at Imperial College London, alien communications might’ve been hidden right under our noses the whole time in the starlight.

“What I show is that alien civilizations can, in principle, run their own quantum internet in such a way that to the creatures excluded from the conversation (us!) we will only ever see thermal electromagnetic radiation,” Rudolph says in an email. “All we would see, if they did use the effect I propose, is some very random looking thermal light.”

In other words, Rudolph is suggesting that interstellar light could actually be harnessed by space faring aliens to form an encrypted quantum internet.