Whether it's for streaming Netflix or sharing files, we're ___1___ more and more data—and we want it faster. But even shooting data with lasers over fiber-optic cables has its limits. Because when you ___2___ digital bits—ones and zeros—into an analog, optical signal, you're still limited by the bit-rate of your electronics. The standing record is about 100 gigabits per second.

To ___3___ that bottleneck, researchers ___4___ the electronic signal processing—and found a way to do it purely optically instead. Using that method, they were able to send data over a 50-kilometer length of optical fiber at 26 terabits per second. That's like sending 700 DVDs a second—the fastest ever recorded for a single laser. The research appears in the journal Nature Photonics. [David Hillerkuss, "26 Tbit s−1 Line-Rate Super-Channel Transmission Utilizing All-Optical Fast Fourier Transform Processing"]

It is possible to transfer equivalent amounts of data with conventional technology, by bundling together hundreds of lasers—but doing it with a single laser is far more ___5___. Of course, there's no telling when these transfer rates will make it to your living room. And whether they'll be fast enough for our future need-for-speed.
【视听版科学小组荣誉出品】
gobbling up encode get around skipped energy efficient
无论是观看奈飞视频还是分享资料，数据量都是相当庞大的，人们对数据传输速度的要求也越来越高。但是即便是利用激光通过光缆传输数据也有速度上的限制，因为把数字位－0和1（俺的记忆中应该就是二进制。。吧。。。）－编码成模拟光纤信号的时候也受到电子电路比特率的限制。目前最高速度是100千兆每秒。 为了突破这个瓶颈，研究人员跳过编码电子信号，转而发现一种编码纯光纤信号的方法。通过这种方法，研究人员可以以26兆兆比特每秒的速度在50千米常的光线中传输数据，就好比在一秒内发送700张DVD的速度——这是一束激光能达到的最高速率了。这项研究发现刊登在《自然光学》杂志上。 利用传统技术传输相同数量的数据也是可能的，把成百束激光捆起来就行——不过只用一束激光要来得节能得多。当然，什么时候家里也能有这样得传输速度那就很难说了。数据传输速度是否能满足人们日益增长的需求也不得而知。