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Ocean Sponge May Be Best for Fiber Optics
TheViffer writes "ABC News is reporting that scientists say they've identified an ocean sponge, living in the darkness of the deep sea, that grows thin glass fibers capable of transmitting light better than industrial fiber optic cables used for telecommunication. 'You can actually tie a knot in these natural biological fibers and they will not break - it's really quite amazing,' said Joanna Aizenberg, who led the research at Bell Laboratories."
Once again, nature outdoes our best attempts at copying it.
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Now, this is the sort of thing that makes you wonder why we spend so little effort studying our oceans. While I am all for space exploration and research, we should also spend considerably more effort to understand what is in our oceans, how they work and what effects we are having on them.
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Long ago, Ma Bell pressurized the long distance cabling with air to keep the conductors dry. What would they have to do with these, pressurize them with seawater?
This would be good for patch cables. It will also be good if you need to go around a tight corner with little leway. leeway. more better. Take two standard fibre-optic cables, patch a bendy one in the middle.
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
... if scientists could reproduce what the sponges are doing synthetically in a lab. This way we could have our new form of fiber optic without killing tons of sponges.
This is why we shouldn't just cream the biosphere- who knows how many absolutely cool techs lurk under the rocks.
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Of course you wouldn't harvest them for their 2 to 7 inch long bits of fibre optic.
You try and replicate the process the sponges use. It at least shows it is possible to make the stuff at cold temperatures, which as the article states (which you obviously didn't bother comprehending, and probably reading) makes doping the glass easier.
um, lights speed is dependent on what it is going through. c is the speed of light in a vacum. Reason for this is that the light hits an atom and then gets retransmitted. This time veries depending on how many times it happens over a spefic distance and how long it takes for it to happen
My Niece has been trying for months to get me to sit down and watch SpongeBob SquarePants.
She says Spongies RULE....
Maybe she's been onto something all along...
do() || do_not();
Worthless as an industrial product, yes. Worthless as a teaching example, that we can use our considerable tool making prowess to expand on? Not by a long shot.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Today we have this thing called biotechnology. We only need a few of them (the sponges) to isolate the gene(s) of interest and use something more plentiful (bacteria/yeast/chinese hamster ovaries) to manufacture it.
If you're wondering Chinese Hamster Ovaries are pretty much the standard in the manufacture of human proteins. I grow them in Bioreactors (fancy jars) everyday.
Considering that these sponges aren't exactly easy to find (like orb spiders), the research should take much longer. But my oh my, imagine the applications: fiber that is as durable as ethernet. Wow.
Actually, the reason you don't have fiber up to your doorstep has more to do with the high cost of digging up your street in order to get it there. This isn't really feasible except maybe in new neighborhoods. Fiber's actually pretty cheap these days, especially compared to other equipment costs like switches and ADMs.
The other problem right now is the high cost of components such as tunable lasers. Even if every home had fiber, it'd cost a lot more to equip your computer with an optical network card. The average Joe Public won't get enough use out of the extra bandwidth (yet) to justify the cost of buying the hardware. This would be true regardless of whether your fiber was made out of sand or sponges.
Although, if someday networks did come to be made out of organic sponges, it'd be funny to see people be forced to remember to water their internet connections or be disconnected :)
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This is true, however, the real benefit of a super-elastic fiber cable is not that you can install it in knots, but that you don't have to be so damned careful in handling it. You could be rough with it while trying to route it through your walls, but when it comes time to fire it up, you may have to go and loosen up the tight turns.