Australian researchers have found a way of slowing down digital information carried as light by transforming it into sound waves within a microchip.

The researchers hope the chip can play a role in saving the under-the-pump fibre optic networks that are the backbone of the global internet.

Dr Birgit Stiller and Moritz Merklein inside their lab in the Sydney Nanoscience Hub. Credit:Louise M Cooper

The first-of-its-kind chip takes light waves, rushing at close to 300,000,000 metres a second, and pushes them through a special wire as a sound wave, which runs five orders of magnitude slower.

"It is like the difference between thunder and lightning," said Dr Birgit Stiller, a physicist who worked with Moritz Merklein​ at the University of Sydney on the project.