The field of quantum information science and technology may soon revolutionize how scientists solve the world’s most difficult computational problems and enable provably secure communication tasks. Central to these pursuits are sources of entanglement, a quantum phenomenon that describes the “spooky” relationships that can exist between quantum entities like photons.
In an effort to involve members of the public in this pursuit, researchers from UIUC are inviting participants around the world to join them on or before Tuesday, Nov. 4 for a journey through virtual space. Quantum Satellite, a web-based video game inspired by the SEAQUE NASA mission, allows users to pilot a high-speed starship through cosmic challenges while making choices that influence real-world quantum research.
Launched on a SpaceX rocket on Nov. 4, 2024, the Space Entanglement and Annealing QUantum Experiment (SEAQUE) is the first US-led mission of this type in space. Paul Kwiat, UIUC Physics Professor and project lead said the mission goals are to validate new and improved methods for creating entanglement – the SEAQUE source has thus far returned the highest fidelity maximally entangled state and Bell inequality violations of any reported space experiment to date – and mitigating the damaging effects of space radiation, eventually leading to space-based quantum links connecting distant nodes on the planet surface.
Quantum Satellite is a video game created to involve the public in the process of verifying the quantum entanglement generated by SEAQUE. Usually, a random number generator supplies the settings used to measure the SEAQUE entangled photons, but this time the researchers want the settings to be determined by the public. This will be the FIRST time that settings from people around the world are used to perform measurements on entangled photons in a different frame of reference – the rapidly moving frame of the International Space Station.
Quantum Satellite will be live on Nov. 4 (in all time zones) to celebrate the first anniversary of the SEAQUE launch (in fact, it’s already operational now). In less than 5 minutes, players can generate multiple measurement settings that will be used to perform a series of experiments to characterize and verify quantum entanglement generated on SEAQUE. We’d like to get as many people playing as possible – our goal is 10,000 participants. It’s suitable for anyone, especially great for junior high and high school students, to introduce them to quantum technologies that are orbiting above them.
Other University of Illinois SEAQUE contributors include Dr. Michael Lembeck, and graduate students and SEAQUE wranglers Kelsey Ortiz and Liam Ramsey. Additional critical experimental contributions in this tri-national project have been made by Thomas Jennewein’s group at Simon Frazer University in Canada and Alex Ling’s at the National University of Singapore. We thank NASA JPL and Boeing for support, and the UIUC Stu/dio for game creation.