The US has outlined a plan to build a parallel quantum internet that could be used by sensitive government departments and banks to send information without intrusion.

The network will rely on the laws of quantum mechanics to send information more securely.  It could be functional in a decade, according to the Department of Energy, which revealed the blueprint of the network in Chicago on Thursday.  

Unlike the internet we currently use, which transmits information by sending tiny particles down cables or  fibre, quantum networks use the strange behaviour of quantum bits, or “qubits”, to transmit information at great speed.

Interception would be impossible because if someone tried to look at a transmission, it would be disturbed, scrambling the message and alerting the recipients. 

Scientists have been working for years to recreate quantum entanglement, which is when the behaviour of a pair of  photons become linked and take on an identical state, and stretch them across a distance so they work like an unbreakable chain.