“The Grid” Will Be 10,000 Times Faster Than Traditional Broadband

The UK’s Times Online is reporting an incredible technological breakthrough as scientists from Cern have set into motion a new technology that could soon make the internet obsolete, or at the very least, 10,000 times too slow for our forward-thinking times.

The scientists who pioneered it (the internet) have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.

At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call. [UK Times Online]

David Britton, a professor of physics at Glasgow University says, “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine.”