In 2012, a team of researchers set a world record, transmitting 1 petabit of data— that’s 10,000 hours of high-def video— over a fifty-kilometer cable, in a second. This wasn’t just any cable. It was a souped-up version of fiber optics, the hidden network that links our planet and makes the internet possible. What is fiber optics and how does it work? Sajan Saini explores the vital technology.
