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How the NEPTUNE Project Wired the Ocean

Posted by samzenpus on from the In-his-house-at-R'lyeh-dead-Cthulhu-waits-for-his-email dept.

An anonymous reader writes with a story about a unique 500-mile-long high-speed optical cable project that runs along the Pacific seafloor. "The Juan de Fuca tectonic plate is by far one of the Earth's smallest. It spans just a few hundred kilometers of the Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia coast. But what the Juan de Fuca lacks in size it makes up for in connectivity. It's home to a unique, high-speed optical cabling that has snaked its way across the depths of the Pacific seafloor plate since late 2009. This link is called NEPTUNE—the North-East Pacific Time-Series Underwater Networked Experiment—and, at more than 800 kilometers (about 500 miles), it's about the same length as 40,000 subway cars connected in a single, long train. A team of scientists, researchers, and engineers from the not-for-profit group Oceans Network Canada maintains the network, which cost CAD $111 million to install and $17 million each year to maintain. But know that this isn't your typical undersea cable. For one, NEPTUNE doesn't traverse the ocean's expanse, but instead loops back to its starting point at shore. And though NEPTUNE is designed to facilitate the flow of information through the ocean, it also collects information about the ocean, ocean life, and the ocean floor."

9 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Re:/.'d too quickly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ah, just go to the source...

  2. Woo! by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 5, Funny

    about the same length as 40,000 subway cars connected in a single, long train

    Crazy Unit of the Year award!

    1. Re:Woo! by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

      How long is a subway car? Most of the world doesn't have subways. Just shows the writer's unconscious bias when she fails to consider this because she and everyone she knows uses the subway every day. It's pernicious and it's inexcusable for educated people.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    2. Re:Woo! by exploder · · Score: 4, Funny

      I was unsure about this, too, but now I know it's about 1/40,000 of a 500 mile road trip. Thanks, Slashdot!

      --
      Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
    3. Re:Woo! by exploder · · Score: 2

      It's still a shitty comparison. The whole point is to give the reader an intuitive sense of an otherwise unimaginable quantity. It should be a red flag when you've replaced the number 500 with 40,000.

      --
      Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
    4. Re:Woo! by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Funny

      How long is a subway car?

      It's about 1/40 thousandth the length of this cabling.

      Sheesh, do we have to explain everything to you guys?

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  3. An that makes how many football fields? by Gunstick · · Score: 3, Funny

    subway cars? come on!

    And how many libraries of congress?

    --
    Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
  4. Re:No one can imagine the size of 40k subway cars by mtthwbrnd · · Score: 2

    It is easy to imagine.

    Start by imagining 1. Then add another 1. Then add another one. Then... when you get to 40,000 then you have successfully imagined 40,000 of them.

  5. Re:Google by necro81 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Google put one of these on the floor of the East coast, rather they are currently engaged in placing one along the east coast for (as I remember) off-shore wind power bus connections

    Aside from both using the word "cable", there is nothing in common between these two projects. One is an undersea fiber optic cable whose primary purpose is scientific exploration, the other is a commercial venture for transporting bulk electrical power.

    Unfortunately, it appears that there is another important difference: NEPTUNE is built and operating, whereas the Atlantic Wind Connection appears to have not made much headway, let alone built anything, in the past couple of years. They haven't so much as done a press release in the last eight months. The current goal is to build one section along the New Jersey shore. Estimated completion date: 2021.