A paper published by Swinburne University of Technology shows how a kind of “optical ruler,” or frequency comb, can greatly increase bandwidth in today’s data-saturated world. Integrated optical frequency comb sources, or microcombs, have driven major advances in spectroscopy, metrology and more. Their potential in data transmission is especially promising, exceeding speeds of one petabit per second—10 million times faster than a 100Mbit/s NBN connection.