Science is Cool: New Internet Tech Goes 26 Terabytes Per Second!

Okay, technology is officially now going too fast. It wasn't too long ago when we were asking, "What comes after gigabyte?" The answer is terabyte, and it has become increasingly more common to measure data at that scale. It's not unusual to find a full terabyte hard drive on new computers. If you're really getting spendy, you might get two. And as with gigabytes, megabytes and kilobytes before, we always think, "I'd never need more space than that!" We manage to grow into it somehow.

But the different measurements are also used to denote the speed at which you can upload and download things. And in that case, we're still pretty solidly in the mega- range, not the giga- or tera-. But now it may be possible to transfer data at scary fast speeds. If this becomes commonplace, using computers in "race the clock" type action movies isn't really going to work anymore is it? "Somebody's coming! Hurry! Oh, you're done? Great!"  By the way, if you're wondering what comes after terabyte, the next leaps in technology will be: petabyte, exabyte, zettabyte and yottabyte. After that, we start moving through time, I think.

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New Internet tech transmits data at 26 terabytes per second
 
In a dramatic breakthrough, scientists have learned how to use optical fiber to transmit data over a single laser at speeds that dwarf even today's fastest Internet connections. . .
 
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