New Data Transfer Record

A team of researchers has reportedly set a new data transmission world record.

The international group from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden used a single light source to transmit 1.8 petabits per second.

In a release, DTU said that they were the first in the world to transmit more than 1 petabit per second – corresponding to 1 million gigabits – using only a single laser and a single optical chip called a "frequency comb."

"In the experiment, the researchers succeeded in transmitting 1.8 Pbit/s, which corresponds to twice the total global Internet traffic," they wrote. "And only carried by the light from one optical source. The light source is a custom-designed optical chip, which can use the light from a single infrared laser to create a rainbow spectrum of many colors, i.e. many frequencies. Thus, the one frequency (color) of a single laser can be multiplied into hundreds of frequencies (colors) in a single chip."

The colors are fixed at a specific frequency distance from each other like the teeth on a comb, which is why it is called a frequency comb.

"Each color (or frequency) can then be isolated and used to imprint data. The frequencies can then be reassembled and sent over an optical fibre, thus transmitting data. Even a huge volume of data, as the researchers have discovered," DTU explained.

Victor Torres Company, a professor at Chalmers University of Technology, said that the chip has ideal characteristics for fiber-optical communications, with "high optical power" and covering a "broad bandwidth within the spectral region that is interesting for advanced optical communications."  READ MORE...

Phantom Galarxy Looks Like A Wormhole

The James Webb Space Telescope's imagery of NGC 628 (the "Phantom Galaxy") shows glowing 

dust in this citizen science image. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/Judy Schmidt)

A fresh image based on brand-new deep-space data appears to show a wormhole spinning before our very eyes.

The appropriately named "Phantom Galaxy" glows eerily in a new image by Judy Schmidt based on James Webb Space Telescope data collected nearly a million miles away from our planet using the observatory's mid-infrared instrument (MIRI).

"I've been doing this for 10 years now, and [Webb] data is new, different, and exciting," Schmidt told Space.com. "Of course I'm going to make something with it."

The image highlights the dust lanes in the galaxy, which is more properly known as NGC 628 or Messier 74. Dubbed the "perfect spiral" by some astronomers because the galaxy is so symmetrical, the Phantom Galaxy is scientifically interesting because of the intermediate-mass black hole scientists believe is embedded at its heart.

The galaxy has been imaged professionally many times before, including by space observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). 

What makes Webb imagery stand apart from these past efforts is the mid-infrared range that highlights cosmic dust, along with the power of its unique 18-segment hexagonal mirror and deep-space location.

Webb observed M74 earlier this week. The data was also shared on Twitter(opens in new tab) (with different filtration) by Gabriel Brammer, an astronomer at the Cosmic Dawn Center in the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Denmark.  READ MORE...