It's easy to take a lot of things for granted when they are part of our everyday lives - like the Internet, for example! Although I do remember a time before the Internet was in my home, it wasn't a huge period; I definitely had online access as early as middle or high school. I don't often stop to think about what an amazing thing it is, but on the occasions where I do it's definitely one of those "whoa" moments.

Recently, a team from the Technical University of Denmark and Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology shattered the data transfer record set by Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT). A new chip using a single laser exceeded NICT's record of 1.02 petabits per second with an astonishing 1.84 Pbit/s - the equivalent of moving "twice the total global Internet traffic" in just one second.