- An infrared laser was emitted on a chip that splits light into different frequencies, or colors, into 223 wavelength channels.

The data was modified in light by modulating amplitude, phase, and polarization. / Freepik

They manage to transmit 1.84 petabits in one second, the equivalent of all Internet traffic

Researchers at the Technical University of Denmark and Chalmers University of Technology have broken an all-time speed record for data transmission using a light source and an optical chip.

The milestone is 1.84 petabits per second (Pbit/s), that is, almost twice the global Internet traffic per second. The experts beamed an infrared laser on a chip that splits light into different frequencies, or colors, into 223 wavelength channels.

The data was then encoded by adjusting the amplitude, phase, and polarization of each of the frequencies before recombining and transmitting them through a fiber optic cable containing 37 separate cores.

Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe (lead author of the study) indicates in NewAtlas that "our solution is scalable, both in terms of creating many frequencies and dividing the chip into many spatial copies and then optically amplifying them and using them as parallel sources with which we can transmit data. Although the copies of the chip must be amplified, we do not lose the qualities of the chip, which we use for spectrally efficient data transmission."

In short, if someone were to send all the data on the Internet with this chip, it would be done in less than a second, due to the global bandwidth that could transmit the entire flow of information.

The normal connection of a user with fiber optics is hundreds of megabytes per second and, hopefully, one Giga per second, therefore, a petabit is a million gigabits.

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