Australia researches technology to make internet 100 times faster
Just think, what would happen if internet speeds were 100 times faster than they are now. Exciting, right? And that's what researchers from Australia are working on, with a breakthrough in fiber optic technology that could pave the way for blazing fast web surfing.
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Scientists have found a new way to transmit information in fiber optic cables using twisted beams of light, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications.
This allows light to carry much more data than current methods of transmitting information, and what's even more amazing is that implementing this new system would be much easier than you might think.
The current fiber optic network is quite perfect compared to the previous copper cable data transmission. Fiber optic cables use light rays to transmit information from one location to another at quite impressive speeds.
However, current fiber optic cables have some drawbacks. As the Guardian notes, existing networks rely on the color and directional properties of light to carry information. And while it may seem like fiber optic networks are ahead of the competition in terms of speed, researchers from Australia’s RMIT University think they could do even better.
The new optical fibre system the researchers are developing guides light in a spiral pattern, allowing it to carry more data. "The model is a double helix like a genetic map, and by exploiting the angular momentum of the network, it can carry more information," Min Gu, co-author of the study, told the Guardian.
The new breakthrough is more compact than previous efforts to increase the efficiency of fiber optic cables and, the researchers say, could be easily added to existing fiber optic networks to increase their information-carrying capacity.
And as current fiber optic networks become obsolete, carriers and users can expect a high-speed fiber optic Internet network around 2040.
