This is breathtaking speed, crushing the previous record of 40 gigabits per second.

To achieve such a massive data rate, researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) used a massive swath of bandwidth at around 240 GHz — close to the terahertz frequency range. To create the signal, two laser beams (carrying the data) are mixed together (using a photon mixer made by NTT Electronics). An electrical signal results, where the frequency of the signal (237.5 GHz in this case) is the difference between the two optical signals. A normal antenna is then used to beam the signal to the receiver, where a fancy chip fabricated out of fast-switching III-V transistors is required to make sense of the super-high-frequency signal.

Imagine being able to copy a Blue-ray disc (that’s about 50 Gb) in just a few seconds. 50 gigabytes is 50×8 = 400 gigabits. That’s 4 seconds to copy a feature film Blue-ray. Impressive.