Dmitry Rogozin showed Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic the latest Russian developments. Among them is the liquid breathing project. For Vučić, a demonstration was carried out on a dachshund, which was placed in a tank of liquid, and within a few seconds in the new environment it began to breathe. This system will help breathe for sailors on a sunken ship or people with burns to their lungs. How is it even possible to breathe liquid?
This is just one of the developments that were created with the assistance of the established state Foundation for Advanced Research. He specializes in breakthrough research in various fields of science and technology.
To make it clear why the discovery is called a real breakthrough. Back in the late 80s, liquid breathing was considered science fiction. It was used by the characters in American director James Cameron's film "The Abyss". And even in the film it was called an experimental development.
They have been trying to teach humans and animals to breathe liquids for a long time. The first experiments in the 60s were unsuccessful; the experimental mice lived very briefly. The technique of liquid ventilation has been tested in humans only once in the United States, to save premature babies. However, none of the three babies could be resuscitated.
Then perftoran was used to deliver oxygen to the lungs; it is also used as blood substitutes. The main problem was that this liquid could not be sufficiently purified. Carbon dioxide did not dissolve well in it, and forced ventilation of the lungs was necessary for prolonged breathing. At rest, a man of average build and average height had to pass through himself 5 liters of fluid per minute, and under load - 10 liters per minute. The lungs are not suitable for such loads. Our researchers managed to solve this problem.
“The problem of those years was that the liquid that was intended for breathing could not be sufficiently purified. And as a result, under high pressure, the by-products soluble in it caused a toxic effect. In the seventies these were mainly perfluorane, they are quite toxic Now these are derivatives of perfluorodecalins. These are substances that are used in the cosmetics industry as an excellent carrier of medicinal and other substances through the skin into the body to saturate the skin, including with oxygen,” said the head of the chemical, biological and medical research department of the Advanced Research Foundation. Fedor Arsenyev.
The opportunities provided by the current discovery of Russian scientists are extremely high. One of them is the fight against overloads. The liquid distributes the load evenly in all directions. Therefore, a person placed in it is able to withstand much higher loads than just a person in a spacesuit. Their tolerance can increase several times, significantly exceeding 20 G, which is now considered the limit for the human body.
When immersed in water, the pressure on a person increases by one atmosphere every 10 meters. Therefore, at great depths, very bulky suits are used. When a person's lungs are filled not with air, but with liquid, the pressure inside the body balances the external pressure, and the person can dive to great depths without special suits. In this case, the blood is not saturated with nitrogen and helium, and therefore long-term decompression is not required when ascending to the surface.
“The discovery will help submarine crews directly escape without the involvement of rescue forces or special apparatus - this is what happens on ships, this time goes by for a day - what happened with the Kursk. At great depths, using these liquid mixtures, submariners can easily rise alive and well from great depths,” said retired captain 1st rank, deputy editor-in-chief of the Russian Ministry of Defense magazine “Warrior of Russia” Vasily Dandykin.
The Russian development will find application not only in the defense industry. It could also be used to help premature babies and people with respiratory burns.
I watched it 8 times for sure. And each time she did it solely for entertainment purposes and an interesting plot with amazing acting, which, according to the testimony of the film crew, greatly exhausted the leading actors.
And the last time I realized that there was something more to this film.
Throughout the film we are told about breathing in liquid. What we started with in the womb can continue. The main thing is the situation.
All 7 viewings for me the film was just a fantasy, a play of the imagination of the screenwriter or director. In one scene they show a mouse breathing a special liquid. In the other, Bud (Ed Harris's character) is in a spacesuit filled with this very liquid. He is sent to a depth where no one has been, filling his lungs with “special water”, because oxygen has nothing to do in the human body at such depths.
Having developed scuba gear about sixty years ago, the Frenchman Jacques Yves Cousteau introduced the term “water” and “lungs” into its name. However, the technology itself for completely filling the lungs with water (in the form of a water-salt solution) became known from the publication of Kylstra J. “A Mouse Like a Fish” - the first on liquid breathing, which talks about this idea of \u200b\u200bsaving submariners. He was the first to conduct descents on land mammals (mice) to a depth of 1000 m and showed that the transition to liquid breathing completely prevents death from decompression gas formation. In the USSR, this was confirmed during artificial lung ventilation (ALV) with liquid in dogs under conditions of simulating diving descents at 1000 m.
The entire liquid breathing system is based on the perfluorocarbon formula. Perflubron is a clear, oily liquid with low density. It contains more oxygen than air. Since this liquid is inert, it does not harm the lungs. Since it has a very low boiling point, it is quickly and easily removed from the lungs;
There are few manufacturers of these liquids on the world market, since their development is a by-product of “nuclear projects”. Medical quality liquids from only a few global companies are known: DuPont (USA), ICI and F2 (Great Britain), Elf-Atochem (France). Perfluorocarbon liquids, technologically developed at the St. Petersburg Institute of Applied Chemistry, are now leaders in medicine and cosmetology;
In Russia, they seriously and without laughing in the smoking room thought about the topic of free ascent through a special system of liquid breathing after;
Since the formation of the Russian Federation, the development of a liquid breathing method for rescuing submariners, as well as the preparation of volunteer tests in 2007, was and is carried out without grants, at the expense of AVF in work with St. Petersburg State Medical University named after. I.P. Pavlova and other organizations;
Currently, a special deep-sea diving apparatus exists in the form of a project within the framework of the author’s concept for the rapid rescue of submariners. It is based on the unique properties of fast and pressure-resistant liquid breathing divers;
Arnold Lande, a former surgeon and now a retired American inventor, has registered a patent for a diving suit equipped with a cylinder with a special liquid enriched with oxygen. The so-called “liquid air” is supplied from a cylinder to the diver’s helmet, fills the entire space around the head, displaces air from the lungs, nasopharynx and ears, saturating the person’s lungs with sufficient oxygen. In turn, carbon dioxide, which is released during respiration, is released through a kind of gills attached to the diver’s femoral vein. That is, the breathing process itself simply becomes unnecessary - oxygen enters the blood through the lungs, and carbon dioxide is removed directly from the blood. True, how this most incompressible liquid will be supplied from the cylinder is not yet entirely clear...;
There is information that experiments on breathing in liquid are being carried out in full swing. And in Russia as well;
In the film "The Abyss", of course, none of the actors breathed "special water". And in one of the scenes there was even a small but very memorable mistake, when Bud descends to the depths, a telltale bubble comes out of his mouth... which should not exist under conditions of liquid breathing;
Actor Ed Harris, who played one of the main roles, the role of Bud, once on the way from filming had to pull over due to an attack of involuntary crying. The process of making the film was so exhausting. Cameron demanded exceptional verisimilitude.
Watch a movie. Breathe freely and only drive off the road to photograph butterflies.
Thanks for making some data publicly available. Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Ph.D.A. V. Filippenko.
MOSCOW, December 25 – RIA Novosti, Tatyana Pichugina. Since the Foundation for Advanced Research (APF) approved the liquid breathing project in 2016, the public has been keenly interested in its success. A recent demonstration of the capabilities of this technology literally blew up the Internet. At a meeting between Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, a dachshund was immersed for two minutes in an aquarium with a special liquid saturated with oxygen. After the procedure, the dog, according to the Deputy Prime Minister, is alive and well. What was this liquid?
“Scientists have synthesized substances that do not exist in nature - perfluorocarbons, in which the intermolecular forces are so small that they are considered something intermediate between a liquid and a gas. They dissolve oxygen 18-20 times more than water,” says Doctor of Medical Sciences Evgeniy Mayevsky, professor, head of the Laboratory of Energy of Biological Systems at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, one of the creators of perftoran, the so-called blue blood. He has been working on medical applications of perfluorocarbons since 1979.
At a partial pressure of one atmosphere, only 2.3 milliliters of oxygen dissolves in 100 milliliters of water. Under the same conditions, perfluorocarbons can contain up to 50 milliliters of oxygen. This makes them potentially breathable.
“For example, when diving to a depth, every 10 meters the pressure increases by at least one atmosphere. As a result, the chest and lungs will shrink to such an extent that it will become impossible to breathe in a gaseous environment. And if there is a gas-carrying liquid in the lungs, it will have a significantly higher density than air and even water, they will be able to function. Oxygen can be dissolved in perfluorocarbons without the admixture of nitrogen, which is abundant in the air and the dissolution of which in tissues is one of the most significant causes of decompression sickness when rising from depth,” Mayevsky continues.
Oxygen will enter the blood from the fluid filling the lungs. Carbon dioxide carried by the blood can also dissolve in it.
The principle of liquid breathing is perfectly mastered by fish. Their gills allow a colossal volume of water to pass through them, take up the oxygen dissolved there and release it into the blood. A person does not have gills, and all gas exchange occurs through the lungs, the surface area of which is approximately 45 times greater than the surface area of the body. To move air through them, we inhale and exhale. The respiratory muscles help us with this. Since perfluorocarbons are denser than air, breathing on surfaces with their help is very problematic.
“This is the science and art of selecting such perfluorocarbons to facilitate the work of the respiratory muscles and prevent damage to the lungs. Much depends on the duration of the process of breathing liquid, on whether it occurs forcefully or spontaneously,” the researcher concludes.
However, there are no fundamental obstacles to a person breathing liquid. Evgeny Mayevsky believes that Russian scientists will bring the demonstrated technology to practical application in the next few years.
From intensive care to rescuing submariners
Scientists began to consider perfluorocarbons as an alternative to breathing gas mixtures in the middle of the last century. In 1962, Dutch researcher Johannes Kylstra published “Of Mice as Fish,” which describes an experiment with a rodent placed in an oxygenated saline solution at a pressure of 160 atmospheres. The animal remained alive for 18 hours. Then Kylstra began experimenting with perfluorocarbons, and already in 1966, at the Cleveland Children's Hospital (USA), physiologist Leland C. Clark tried to use them to improve the breathing of newborns with cystic fibrosis. This is a genetic disorder in which a baby is born with underdeveloped lungs and its alveoli collapse, preventing breathing. The lungs of such patients are washed with saline solution saturated with oxygen. Clark decided it would be better to do this with an oxygen-containing liquid. This researcher subsequently did a lot for the development of liquid breathing.
© 20th Century Fox Film CorporationStill from the movie "The Abyss"
© 20th Century Fox Film Corporation
In the early 1970s, the USSR became interested in “breathing” liquid, largely thanks to the head of the laboratory of the Leningrad Research Institute of Blood Transfusion, Zoya Aleksandrovna Chaplygina. This institute became one of the leaders in the project to create blood substitutes - oxygen carriers based on perfluorocarbon emulsions and solutions of modified hemoglobin.
Felix Beloyartsev and Khalid Khapiy actively worked on the use of these substances for washing the lungs at the Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery.
“In our experiments, the lungs of small animals suffered somewhat, but they all survived,” recalls Evgeniy Mayevsky.
The breathing system using liquid was developed on a closed topic at institutes in Leningrad and Moscow, and since 2008 - at the Department of Aerohydrodynamics of Samara State Aerospace University. There they made a capsule of the “Mermaid” type to practice liquid breathing in the event of an emergency rescue of submariners from great depths. Since 2015, the development has been tested in Sevastopol on the Terek theme, supported by the Fund.
Legacy of the atomic project
Perfluorocarbons (perfluorocarbons) are organic compounds in which all hydrogen atoms are replaced by fluorine atoms. This is emphasized by the Latin prefix “per-”, meaning completeness, integrity. These substances are not found in nature. They tried to synthesize them at the end of the 19th century, but they really succeeded only after World War II, when they were needed for the nuclear industry. Their production in the USSR was established by Academician Ivan Lyudvigovich Knunyants, founder of the laboratory of organofluorine compounds at INEOS RAS.
“Perfluorocarbons were used in the technology for producing enriched uranium. In the USSR, their largest developer was the State Institute of Applied Chemistry in Leningrad. Currently, they are produced in Kirovo-Chepetsk and Perm,” says Mayevsky.
Externally, liquid perfluorocarbons look like water, but are noticeably denser. They do not react with alkalis and acids, do not oxidize, and decompose at temperatures above 600 degrees. In fact, they are considered chemically inert compounds. Due to these properties, perfluorocarbon materials are used in intensive care and regenerative medicine.
“There is such an operation - bronchial lavage, when a person under anesthesia is washed out one lung, and then the other. In the early 80s, together with the Volgograd surgeon A.P. Savin, we came to the conclusion that it is better to do this procedure with perfluorocarbon in the form of an emulsion,” - Evgeniy Mayevsky gives an example.
These substances are actively used in ophthalmology, to accelerate wound healing, and in diagnosing diseases, including cancer. In recent years, the method of NMR diagnostics using perfluorocarbons has been developed abroad. In our country, these studies are successfully carried out by a team of scientists from Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov under the leadership of Academician Alexey Khokhlov, INEOS, ITEB RAS and IIP (Serpukhov).
It should also be mentioned that these substances are used to make oils and lubricants for systems operating at high temperatures, including jet engines.
The Russian Foundation for Advanced Research began testing liquid breathing technology for submariners on dogs.
Deputy General Director of the Foundation Vitaly Davydov spoke about this. According to him, full-scale tests are already underway.
In one of his laboratories, work is underway on liquid breathing. For now, experiments are being carried out on dogs. In our presence, a red dachshund was immersed in a large flask of water, face down. It would seem, why mock an animal, it will choke now. But no. She sat under water for 15 minutes. And the record is 30 minutes. Incredible. It turns out that the dog's lungs filled with oxygenated fluid, which gave her the ability to breathe underwater. When they pulled her out, she was a little lethargic - they say it was due to hypothermia (and I think who would like to hang around under water in a jar in front of everyone), but after a few minutes she became quite herself. “Soon experiments will be carried out on people,” says Rossiyskaya Gazeta journalist Igor Chernyak, who witnessed the unusual tests.
All this was similar to the fantastic plot of the famous film "The Abyss", where a person could descend to great depths in a spacesuit, the helmet of which was filled with liquid. The submariner breathed it. Now this is no longer fantasy.
Liquid breathing technology involves filling the lungs with a special liquid saturated with oxygen, which penetrates the blood. The Foundation for Advanced Research approved the implementation of a unique project, the work is being carried out by the Research Institute of Occupational Medicine. It is planned to create a special spacesuit that will be useful not only for submariners, but also for pilots and astronauts.
As Vitaly Davydov told a TASS correspondent, a special capsule was created for the dogs, which was immersed in a hydraulic chamber with high pressure. At the moment, dogs can breathe for more than half an hour at a depth of up to 500 meters without health consequences. “All test dogs survived and feel good after prolonged liquid breathing,” assured the deputy head of the FPI.
Few people know that experiments on liquid breathing on humans have already been carried out in our country. They gave amazing results. Aquanauts breathed liquid at a depth of half a kilometer or more. But the people never learned about their heroes.
In the 1980s, the USSR developed and began to implement a serious program for rescuing people at depth.
Special rescue submarines were designed and even put into operation. The possibilities of human adaptation to depths of hundreds of meters were studied. Moreover, the aquanaut had to be at such a depth not in a heavy diving suit, but in a light, insulated wetsuit with scuba gear behind his back; his movements were not constrained by anything.
Since the human body consists almost entirely of water, it is not dangerous by the terrible pressure at depth in itself. The body just needs to be prepared for it by increasing the pressure in the pressure chamber to the required value. The main problem is different. How to breathe at a pressure of tens of atmospheres? Clean air becomes poison for the body. It must be diluted in specially prepared gas mixtures, usually nitrogen-helium-oxygen.
Their recipe - the proportions of various gases - is the biggest secret in all countries where similar research is underway. But at very great depths, helium mixtures do not help. The lungs must be filled with fluid to prevent them from rupturing. What is the liquid that, once in the lungs, does not lead to suffocation, but transmits oxygen to the body through the alveoli - a mystery of mysteries.
That is why all work with aquanauts in the USSR, and then in Russia, was carried out under the heading “top secret”.
Nevertheless, there is quite reliable information that in the late 1980s there was a deep-sea aquastation in the Black Sea, in which test submariners lived and worked. They went out to sea, dressed only in wetsuits, with scuba gear on their backs, and worked at depths of 300 to 500 meters. A special gas mixture was supplied under pressure into their lungs.
It was assumed that if the submarine was in distress and lay on the bottom, then a rescue submarine would be sent to it. Aquanauts will be prepared in advance for work at the appropriate depth.
The hardest thing is to be able to withstand filling your lungs with fluid and simply not die from fear
And when the rescue submarine approaches the disaster site, divers in light equipment will go out into the ocean, examine the emergency boat and help evacuate the crew using special deep-sea vehicles.
It was not possible to complete those works due to the collapse of the USSR. However, those who worked at depth were still awarded the stars of Heroes of the Soviet Union.
Probably, even more interesting research was continued in our time near St. Petersburg on the basis of one of the Navy Research Institutes.
There, too, experiments were conducted on gas mixtures for deep-sea research. But, most importantly, perhaps for the first time in the world, people there learned to breathe liquid.
In terms of their uniqueness, those works were much more complex than, say, preparing astronauts for flights to the Moon. The testers were subjected to enormous physical and psychological stress.
First, the body of the aquanauts in the air pressure chamber was adapted to a depth of several hundred meters. They then moved into a chamber filled with liquid, where the dive continued to depths said to be almost a kilometer.
The hardest thing, as those who did have the chance to communicate with the aquanauts say, was to withstand the filling of the lungs with liquid and simply not die of fear. This does not mean cowardice. Fear of choking is a natural reaction of the body. Anything could happen. Spasm of the lungs or cerebral vessels, even a heart attack.
When a person realized that the fluid in the lungs does not bring death, but gives life at great depths, completely special, truly fantastic sensations arose. But only those who experienced such a dive know about them.
Alas, the work, amazing in its significance, was stopped for a simple reason - due to lack of finance. The aquanaut heroes were given the title of Heroes of Russia and sent into retirement. The names of the submariners are classified to this day.
Although they should be honored as the first cosmonauts, because they paved the way into the deep hydrospace of the Earth.
Now experiments on liquid breathing have been resumed; they are being carried out on dogs, mainly dachshunds. They also experience stress.
But researchers feel sorry for them. As a rule, after underwater experiments they are taken to live in their home, where they are fed delicious food and surrounded with affection and care.
The liquid breathing system being developed by the Foundation for Advanced Research (APF) will help submariners quickly rise to the surface without decompression sickness. The anthropomorphic robot Fedor will take part in testing a new Russian spacecraft and may help Rosatom in the disposal of nuclear waste. An extreme depth submersible will be tested at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The chairman of the foundation’s scientific and technical council, Vitaly Davydov, told Izvestia about the Fund’s projects.
- How many projects has the foundation implemented and which of them would you especially highlight?
We have about 50 projects at various stages of implementation. Another 25 have been completed. The results obtained are transferred or transferred to customers. Technology demonstrators have been created, about 400 results of intellectual activity have been obtained. The range of topics ranges from diving to the bottom of the Mariana Trench to space.
Among the implemented projects, we can mention, for example, the tests of a rocket detonation engine successfully carried out last year together with the leading rocket engine manufacturing enterprise NPO Energomash. At the same time, for the first time in the world, the foundation received a stable operating mode for a demonstrator of a detonation air-breathing engine. If the first is intended for space technology, then the second is for aviation. Hypersonic aircraft using such systems will face many problems. For example, with high temperatures. The Foundation found a solution to these problems by using the effect of thermal emission - the conversion of thermal energy into electrical energy. In fact, we receive electricity to power the systems of the device and at the same time cool the airframe elements and the engine.
- One of the Foundation’s most famous projects is the robot Fedor. Has its creation been completed?
– Yes, work on Fedor has been completed. The results are now being transferred to the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Moreover, it turned out that they were of interest not only to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, but also to other ministries, as well as state corporations. Many have probably heard that Fedor’s technologies will be used by Roscosmos to create a test robot that will fly on the new Russian manned spacecraft "Federation". Rosatom showed great interest in the robot. He needs technologies that provide the ability to work in conditions that are dangerous to humans. For example, when disposing of nuclear waste.
- Is it possible to use Fedor to rescue submarine crews and examine sunken ships?
Technologies obtained during the creation of Fedor can be used for various purposes. The Foundation is implementing a number of projects related to underwater uninhabited vehicles. And in principle, anthropomorphic robot technologies can be integrated into them. In particular, It is planned to create an underwater vehicle to operate at extreme depths. We intend to test it in the Mariana Trench. At the same time, not just sink to the bottom, like our predecessors, but provide the ability to move in the near-bottom area and conduct scientific research. No one has ever done this before.
In the USA, a four-legged robot for transporting cargo, BigDog, is being developed. Are similar developments underway at the Fund?
As for walking platforms for carrying cargo or ammunition, the foundation does not carry out such work. But some organizations with which we cooperate have proactively engaged in similar developments. The question of whether such a robot is needed on the battlefield remains open. In most cases, it is more profitable to use wheeled or tracked vehicles.
- What robotic platforms are being created at FPI, besides Fedor?
We are developing a whole range of platforms for various purposes. These are ground, air, and sea robots. Performing reconnaissance tasks, transporting cargo, and also capable of conducting combat operations. One of the areas of work in this area is determining the appearance and testing methods of using drones, including group ones. I think that if everything continues at the same pace, in the near future there will be a significant expansion in the use of drones, including for combat missions.
- FPI is developing an atmospheric satellite “Sova” - a large electric aircraft. How are his trials going?
-Testing of the Sova unmanned aerial vehicle demonstrator has been completed. A long flight took place at an altitude of about 20 thousand m. Unfortunately, the device fell into a zone of severe turbulence and was seriously damaged. But by this time we had already received all the necessary data, we were convinced of both the promising nature of the research direction itself and the correctness of the chosen design solutions. The experience gained will be used to create and test a full-size device.
Enterprise "Roscosmos" NPO named after. Lavochkina is conducting a similar development - creating an atmospheric satellite “Aist”. Are you following your competitors' developments?
We are aware of these works and keep in touch with the developers of Aist. This is not about competition, but about mutual complementarity.
Can such devices be used in the Arctic zone, where there is no communication and infrastructure for frequent takeoffs and landings?
It must be taken into account that in spring and autumn, and even more so during the polar night, the “atmospheric satellite” may simply not receive the energy necessary to charge the batteries. This limits its use.
Recently, liquid breathing technologies were demonstrated to the public - immersing a dachshund in a special oxygen-saturated liquid. The "drowning" demonstration sparked a wave of protests. Will work in this direction continue after this?
-Work on liquid breathing continues. Based on our development, thousands of lives can be saved. And we are talking not only about submariners, who, thanks to liquid breathing, will be able to quickly rise to the surface without consequences in the form of decompression sickness. There are a number of lung diseases and injuries that can be successfully treated with liquid breathing. There are interesting prospects for using liquid breathing technology to quickly cool the body when it is necessary to slow down the processes occurring in it. Now this is done through external cooling or injecting a special solution into the blood. You can do the same thing, but more effectively, by filling your lungs with a cooled breathing mixture.
The head of the FPI laboratory for the creation of liquid breathing, Anton Tonshin, with a dachshund named Nicholas, with the help of which scientists from the Foundation for Advanced Research (FPI) studied the possibilities of liquid breathing
It should be noted that there is no harm to the health of the animals participating in these experiments. All the “experimenters” are alive. Some of them are kept in a laboratory where their condition is monitored. Many have become pets for employees, but their condition is also periodically monitored by our specialists. Observational results indicate the absence of negative consequences of liquid breathing. The technology has been proven, and we have moved on to creating special devices for its practical implementation.
- When will you move on to researching liquid breathing in humans?
Theoretically, we are ready for such experiments, but to start them it is necessary to at least create and test the appropriate equipment.
At one time, FPI developed a software platform for designing various equipment, designed to replace foreign software. Is it used somewhere?
Work on creating a unified environment for Russian engineering software “Herbarium” has indeed been completed. The issue of using it in Rosatom and Roscosmos is now being considered - for the design of promising samples of nuclear industry products, as well as rocket and space technology.
- Does the fund work in the field of augmented reality technologies?
-Yes, the fund is carrying out such work - in particular, together with KamAZ. One of our laboratories has created a prototype of augmented reality glasses that provide control over the assembly of components for a car. The program tells you which part you need to take and where to install it. If the operator performs incorrect actions, for example, deviates from the established order of assembling the product or incorrectly installs its elements, an audio alert sounds about the incorrect step, and information about the error is displayed on the glasses. In this case, the fact of incorrect actions or even their attempt is recorded in an electronic journal. As a result, a system must be created that eliminates the possibility of incorrect assembly. In the future, we intend to develop this system in the direction of miniaturization and replace the glasses with more advanced devices.
The prospects for computing technology are now associated with the development of quantum computers, and information security with quantum cryptography. Is FPI developing these areas?
The Foundation is engaged in issues related to quantum computing and the creation of the corresponding element base. As for quantum communications, everyone is hearing about the experiences of their Chinese colleagues. But we are not standing still.
Back in the fall of 2016, FPI and Rostelecom provided quantum transmission of information via fiber-optic cable between Noginsk and Pavlovsky Posad. The experiment was successful. Today you can already talk on a quantum phone. An important feature of quantum information transfer is the impossibility of interception.
During the mentioned experiment, quantum communication was provided at a distance of about 30 km. Technically, there are no problems in implementing it at a greater range. We are preparing to conduct a communication session via an atmospheric channel. We are exploring the possibility of an experiment on quantum communication from space using the potential of the International Space Station.
