Scientists reach speeds of 2.56 terabits per second with photons.
43 replies, posted
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[B]A multi-national team led by USC with researchers hailing from the U.S., China, Pakistan and Israel has developed a system of transmitting data using twisted beams of light at ultra-high speeds – up to 2.56 terabits per second.[/B]
To put that in perspective, broadband cable (which you probably used to download this) supports up to about 30 megabits per second. The twisted-light system transmits more than 85,000 times more data per second.
Their work might be used to build high-speed satellite communication links, short free-space terrestrial links, or potentially be adapted for use in the fiber optic cables that are used by some Internet service providers.
"You're able to do things with light that you can't do with electricity," said Alan Willner, electrical engineering professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the corresponding author of an article about the research that was published in [I]Nature Photonics[/I] on June 24. "That's the beauty of light; it's a bunch of photons that can be manipulated in many different ways at very high speed."
Willner and his colleagues used beam-twisting "phase holograms" to manipulate eight[URL="http://phys.org/tags/beams+of+light/"]beams of light[/URL] so that each one twisted in a DNA-like helical shape as it propagated in free space. Each of the beams had its own individual twist and can be encoded with "1" and "0" data bits, making each an independent data stream – much like separate channels on your radio.
Their demonstration transmitted the data over open space in a lab, attempting to simulate the sort of communications that might occur between satellites in space. Among the next steps for the research field will be to advance how it could be adapted for use in fiber optics, like those frequently used to transmit data over the Internet.
The team's work builds on research done by Leslie Allen, Anton Zeilinger, Miles Padgett and their colleagues at several European universities.
"We didn't invent the twisting of light, but we took the concept and ramped it up to a terabit-per-second," Willner said. His team included Jian Wang, Jeng-Yuan Yang, Irfan M. Fazal, Nisar Ahmed, Yan Yan, Hao Huang, Yongxiong Ren and Yang Yue from USC; Samuel Dolinar from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and Moshe Tur from Tel Aviv University.
Wang, the lead author, left USC after completing this research and is now a professor at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China.
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Source:
[URL]http://phys.org/news/2012-06-scientists.html[/URL]
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Some light reading..
this is incredibly awesome
Download games in 2 seconds for only 5000$ a month!
Still doesn't beat that box full of terabyte HDDs falling off the table
[QUOTE=skullorz;36485235]Download games in 2 seconds for only 5000$ a month![/QUOTE]
2 seconds? it would be a fraction of a second at those speeds. Like approx 0.0859 seconds if my math is right.
[QUOTE=inconspicious;36485283]2 seconds? it would be a fraction of a second at those speeds. Like approx 0.0859 seconds if my math is right.[/QUOTE]
A Pirates wet dream.
[QUOTE=skullorz;36485235]Download games in 2 seconds for only 5000$ a month![/QUOTE]
The bottleneck in that situation would be your hard drive's write speed. :v:
at those speeds you literally COULD download the internet.
[QUOTE=skullorz;36485235]Download games in 2 seconds for only 5000$ a month![/QUOTE]
If I could afford it, I'd gladly waste my money on internet speeds like that
Just wait until Comcast gets ahold of it
2.56 TB/s ? 250gig Cap. Anyway, servers would have to use it as well for you to benefit from having it, and this still won't make Aussie's 250ms ping be 30 in a US server
Golly. I can download porn [i] while [/i] I download porn, with 0% slowdown! Thanks, Comcast!
Meanwhile, my upload speed is ass.
[QUOTE=MIPS;36485684]Meanwhile, my upload speed is ass.[/QUOTE]
"we have Download speeds of 2.56Tb/s but an upload speed of only 500k"
According to another source it's wireless too.
[QUOTE=inconspicious;36485283]2 seconds? it would be a fraction of a second at those speeds. Like approx 0.0859 seconds if my math is right.[/QUOTE]
Don't forget marketing language!
"Up to" 2.56 terabits
Imagine all the porn you could download with that speed.
Photons are awesome.
High-speed satellite internet would be pretty cool, since a ping of about 2000ms currently makes it pretty limited in gaming use
The fact that we can send data through photons is actually mind numbing. Science is fucking awesome.
[QUOTE=MIPS;36485684]Meanwhile, my upload speed is ass.[/QUOTE]
20-25 MB/s upload speed master race.
The upload speed is 1/4 of the download speed like many other places.
God, I fucking love science.
[QUOTE=Civil;36487011]20-25 MB/s upload speed master race.
The upload speed is 1/4 of the download speed like many other places.[/QUOTE]
MB or Mb? It does matter.
Are you saying that you have a 1Gbit/300Mbit line?
Now they just need to throw in carbon nano tubes to make it even cooler.
[QUOTE=Phaselancer;36488432]Now they just need to throw in carbon nano tubes to make it even cooler.[/QUOTE]
Everything's cooler with carbon nanotubes.
What's next after light speed connections? Ludicrous Speed? :v:
Still awesome though.
[QUOTE=X-JIDE;36488643]What's next after light speed connections? Ludicrous Speed? :v:
Still awesome though.[/QUOTE]
Well, in theory they could use higher frequency EM radiation, like UV, X-ray or Gamma radiation. At least, that applies to the way information is transmitted at the moment (you can't send data faster than the frequency of the signal used to carry it).
[QUOTE=Phaselancer;36488432]Now they just need to throw in carbon nano tubes to make it even cooler.[/QUOTE]
It would make it more functional, too! Carbon Nanotubes can do [B]ANYTHING![/B]
[QUOTE=VistaPOWA;36487072]MB or Mb? It does matter.
Are you saying that you have a 1Gbit/300Mbit line?[/QUOTE]
Sweden.
[QUOTE=Zezibesh;36486247]High-speed satellite internet would be pretty cool, since a ping of about 2000ms currently makes it pretty limited in gaming use[/QUOTE]
You'd have the same latency, since this doesn't affect the speed, it affects the bandwidth.
I did the conversion and I thought I'd post it since no one else has.
2.56 terabits/second is 327.68 gigabytes/second.
[QUOTE=TheJoker;36486204]Imagine all the porn you could download with that speed.[/QUOTE]
You could download ALL the porn.
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