Lightening fast data speeds that don’t cost a zillion bucks to integrate have been the Holy Grail of countless tech researchers for years. Now, a brand new method that involves an incredibly simplistic concept has been put forward by researchers at Bell Laboratories, promising to accelerate data speeds beyond our wildest imaginations. By creating mirrored beams of light that act to cancel out ‘noise’, researchers have managed to send a massive 400GB/s signal through almost 8,000 meters of fiber optic cable.

According to the Nature Photonics journal, what’s most peculiar about this discovery is that no one ever thought to do so before. Researchers claim the best way to achieve fast data transfers is by sending two beams of light down fiber optic cables rather than just one, as has always been done. The twin beams are essentially mirror images of each other, and these are merged once they reach the end of the cable, where a process called “phase conjugation” cancels out the noise.

To understand how it works, we need to know a little about fiber optic signals. When light beams are transmitted through the cable, they produce a pattern that’s full of “peaks” and “troughs” (basically “ups” and “downs”). Phase conjugation works by reversing the light beams (hence, they are mirror images), so that peaks become troughs and vice versa. This means that the hiccups are cancelled out, resulting in a much more efficient data transfer.

Some researchers have hit on the phase conjugation idea before, but these previous theories have only ever considered installing devices along the length of the fiber optic cable to achieve the effect. By using twin beams of light, the researchers remove that necessity, simply merging the two signals at the end to achieve a perfect signal.

Dr. Xiang Liu of Bell Laboratories likened the method to noise-cancelling headphones, and said that it allows for data to be transmitted much further before any interference can corrupt it. Their experiments showed that light beams can be sent four times further than regular data streams, while the 400 GB/s speed they achieved are simply phenomenal.  In comparison, Google’s Fiber project in Kansas offers a mere 1GB/s data transfer speed.

As is typical with new discoveries, it remains to be seen if or when this innovative method will be put to use in the real world. Researchers say that doing so will require new infrastructure to be built, and for now it’s not clear whether this is the most cost-effective technique. Still, it’s good to know that someone is trying to come up with a way to satisfy our constantly growing hunger for more and more bandwidth.