The glass fibers connecting our wireless world
All modern means of communication rely on glass. From the Gorilla glass on our phones to the infotainment screens on our cars. But when I think of the internet I think of 5G, Starlink satellites, and WiFi, and I never think about the 750,000 miles of fiber optic cables currently running under our oceans: the tiny strands of glass that carry all of our photos, emails, and video chats. It is through these hair-thin strands of fiber that we are able to instantly communicate to almost anyone, anywhere, and it all relies on a 5,000 year old technology: glass.
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00:00- All right, buds, you
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undefined:undefinedhistory with technology.
00:39And without it, you wanna be
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undefined:undefinedChair of Optical Fiber.
00:58- Buds, he knows a lot about glass.
01:01- It never gets old.
01:02Since the first installation
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undefined:undefinedconverted into light,
01:41gets propagated around
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undefined:undefinedcore that is pure glass,
02:16surrounded by a glass cladding
02:17with a lower refractive index.
02:20This allows light to travel
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undefined:undefinedat making more of it.
02:41(upbeat music)
02:43- Now let's talk about
02:43what's actually moving through that glass.
02:46As far back as the Telegram,
02:47telecommunications has
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undefined:undefineda lot of connections today,
03:12but there are two main
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undefined:undefinedthe amount of wave cycles
03:36that occur within a
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undefined:undefinedtypical radio in your car
03:53are measured in megahertz,
03:54so for our example, they're 112 size font,
03:57I can fit about one alphabet
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undefined:undefinedabout 1,276 alphabets
04:23in our analogy here.
04:24So if we wanna speed up our connection,
04:25we need to figure out how to
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undefined:undefinedcapacity by 60% per year.
04:45And it's been that way for 30 years,
04:47and has no expectation of stopping.
04:50- [Becca] Tod Sizer leads of research lab
04:51at Nokia Bell Labs,
04:53and last merger researcher for his team
04:55set a new company record
04:56when they transmitted 1.52
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undefined:undefinedmeet that 60% per year curve.
05:23- Are we going to need to update
05:24that material at some point?
05:25Is there a limit to the
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undefined:undefinedyou can send over that.
05:48We've been following a curve
05:50towards getting towards Shannon's
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undefined:undefinedshowing us how our data
06:19is converted into light and
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undefined:undefinedyour transmission fiber,
06:41and then you send it into that fiber link
06:44that is laid on the bottom of the ocean.
06:47And on the other side of the ocean,
06:49you will have a optical receiver
06:51that basically try to
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undefined:undefinedthan switching it on and off,
07:20you can switch it half on and half off,
07:24and you can make more levels,
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undefined:undefinedhas no glass in the middle,
07:52it's called hollow core.
07:54It has actually air in the middle,
07:56that might allow us to go faster as well.
08:00(upbeat music)
08:02- The future of the internet
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undefined:undefinedhow that allocated money
08:22will be distributed, but telecom companies
08:24are hoping it will help
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undefined:undefinedCorning and Sumitomo,
08:35they'll have to produce huge amounts
08:37of near perfect fiber optic cable
08:39before telecom companies
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undefined:undefinedglasses on your phone,
08:54historically people think
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