How do messages travel through cables under the ocean?
Glass Highways Below
How do messages travel through cables under the ocean?
Right now, someone in Tokyo is watching a cat video uploaded in New York. Someone in London is video-calling their friend in Sydney. All those hellos and silly memes and movie streams — they're zipping across the ocean floor in cables thicker than a garden hose, carrying light.
The cables aren't full of water or electricity — they're full of glass. Thin strands of glass, each one narrower than a human hair, bundled together inside rubber and steel. And through that glass? Pulses of laser light, flashing on and off millions of times per second.
