Whether it's for streaming Netflix or sharing files, we're ___1___ more and more data—and we want it faster. But even shooting data with lasers over fiber-optic cables has its limits. Because when you ___2___ digital bits—ones and zeros—into an analog, optical signal, you're still limited by the bit-rate of your electronics. The standing record is about 100 gigabits per second.

To ___3___ that bottleneck, researchers ___4___ the electronic signal processing—and found a way to do it purely optically instead. Using that method, they were able to send data over a 50-kilometer length of optical fiber at 26 terabits per second. That's like sending 700 DVDs a second—the fastest ever recorded for a single laser. The research appears in the journal Nature Photonics. [David Hillerkuss, "26 Tbit s?1 Line-Rate Super-Channel Transmission Utilizing All-Optical Fast Fourier Transform Processing"]

It is possible to transfer equivalent amounts of data with conventional technology, by bundling together hundreds of lasers—but doing it with a single laser is far more ___5___. Of course, there's no telling when these transfer rates will make it to your living room. And whether they'll be fast enough for our future need-for-speed.
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