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."

Comments

For all our technology

[The Munger]

Once again, nature outdoes our best attempts at copying it.

Space or oceans?

[BWJones]

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.

Re:Space or oceans?

[Qrlx]

to understand what is in our oceans, how they work and what effects we are having on them.

The oceans certainly contain many great mysteries. However, the effect we're having on it is pretty clear: destroy and degrade it with pollution. Algae blooms, dying coral, overfishing. We are slowly killing/pillaging the oceans, which doesn't seem to bother anyone enough to stop doing it. (Though occasionally we decide to do it less.) Hey, we don't live there anymore, not our problem!

I wonder....

[Penguin Follower]

... 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.

Looting nature

[Mittermeyer]

This is why we shouldn't just cream the biosphere- who knows how many absolutely cool techs lurk under the rocks.

Re:Over fishing Risk?

[sholden]

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.

Re:7 inches long!

[Kibo]

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.

We probably have a while to go

[mao che minh]

After discovering that spider silk was pound for pound much stronger then any man made synthetic, elastic material, scientists took over a decade to emulate it (and even then not quite as good).

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.

Re:Yeah but

[tessaiga]

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 :)