DARPA, the US military's R&D division, has been awarded a Guinness World Record for creating the world's fastest solid-state chip, clocked at one terahertz -- or 1,000 gigahertz, if that's easier to digest. Computers and radio systems that operate up in the terahertz range have some very interesting and powerful properties, from the creation of hand-held tricorders and security scanners, through to wireless networks that are hundreds of times faster than 2.4 and 5GHz WiFi.