Building the future with quantum technology

CapeTalk's John Maytham is joined by Professor Andrew Forbes, Distinguished Professor in the Structured Light Laboratory at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Listen below:

What if South Africa could help unlock a technological future once confined to science fiction?

In collaboration with top international institutions, Professor Forbes and his team are creating a topological toolkit that could allow quantum communication to thrive — even when signals begin to decay.

One of the major outcomes of such technology, is improved online security.

"Unless the known laws of physics are wrong, your information will be fundamentally secure... so quantum brings a security layer to how we communicate and share information around the globe."

- Professor Andrew Forbes, University of the Witwatersrand

"There are certain problems that are just too hard for our regular computers to solve - they take too long. Quantum computers can do it in exponentially faster time."

- Professor Andrew Forbes, University of the Witwatersrand

Forbes explains that this opens up a whole new world of what we can calculate...

"From climate, to energy, drug discovery, modelling the stock market... many spheres of society are impacted by these technologies."

- Professor Andrew Forbes, University of the Witwatersrand

RELATED: Google’s Quantum Leap – A Gamechanger in Computing?

Scroll up to the audio player to listen to the discussion.