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Biotech Science

Ocean Sponge May Be Best for Fiber Optics 321

Posted by simoniker from the spongebob's-unexpected-IPO dept.
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."
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Ocean Sponge May Be Best for Fiber Optics More

Ocean Sponge May Be Best for Fiber Optics

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  • For all our technology (Score:5, Insightful)

    by The Munger ( 695154 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:09PM (#6750413) Homepage
    Once again, nature outdoes our best attempts at copying it.

  • 7 inches long! (Score:5, Funny)

    by killthiskid ( 197397 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:10PM (#6750419) Homepage Journal
    The sponge grows in deep water in the tropics. It is about a foot and a half tall with an intricate silica mesh skeleton that also serves as a home for shrimp. The glass fibers form a crown at its base that appear to help anchor the sponge to the ocean floor. The fibers are about 2 to 7 inches long and each is about the thickness of a human hair.

    Cool, fiber optics up to 7 inches long! That'll be effective! I can finally connect my computer to... uhh... to my uhh... what the hell, 7 inches! WTF!

  • Ahh yes.. this brings back child hood memories. (Score:5, Funny)

    by matth ( 22742 ) * on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:10PM (#6750423) Homepage
    Hrmm... what lives in a pineapple under the sea... sponge bob fiber light... wait no.. er... DOH!

  • Copying nature? (Score:5, Funny)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:11PM (#6750427) Homepage
    Are we still allowed to copy nature? I thought reverse engineering was made illegal under the DMCA.

    • Re:Copying nature? (Score:5, Funny)

      by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt AT nerdflat DOT com> on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:15PM (#6750447) Journal
      Nature was benevolent enough to put her stuff in the public domain.

      God, however, is another story.

      • Nature was benevolent enough to put her stuff in the public domain.

        God, however, is another story.

        God indeed. He has so many publicists I can never tell who to send my check to.

        Nature, by the way, is up to her neck in patent infringement suits from numerous Biotech firms. SCO has yet to make an official announcement reguarding any infringing soruce code but are carefully looking into the matter.

        • Re:Copying nature? (Score:4, Funny)

          by Nucleon500 ( 628631 ) <tcfelker@example.com> on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @09:39PM (#6750986) Homepage
          This just in!

          In a recent press release, SCO has claimed that Linux, Windows, and, yes, even Nature herself are violating its IP. "Our pattern recognition experts, after verifying our Linux ownership, found that Windows is basically Linux sans fork(2), so we clearly own it too," says Darl McBride, SCO's CEO and intellectual property rights advocate. "But the real breakthrough was when we found crabs were finding shells with algorithms that we own."

          "It turns out that when crabs outgrow their shell, they look in ('iterate through,' in programmer's lingo) a pile ('array') of shells, and when they find one that fits, they move in," explains Yahkee group analyst and industry visionary Laura DiDio. "Although Nature's algorithm is implemented as a neural net, it has been copied line by line from SCO's malloc code. It's time people realized that while a free, massively parallel, evolving population looks good on paper, it needs to face the reality, which is that SCO will enforce it's rights."

          Open source advocates point out that crabs had perfected their algorithm long before SCO existed, but McBride says he owns the rights, because of an ammendment letter God sent him that nobody can find. He also says that although Caldera released the crab algorithm under the old BSD license, crabs do not include the copyright notice, and besides, SCO has "absolutely no idea what it's doing."

          Film at 11.
      • Actually, nature was placed under the GPL. To obtain the source code for the sponge, as in accordance with the GPL, send an email to sponge@nature.org [mailto].

        Of course this presumes that the sponge has not since declared the GPL invalid, and relicensed itself with an EULA similar to the SCO NDA.

    • Or would that be SPCP?
    • Blockquoth the poster:

      Are we still allowed to copy nature? I thought reverse engineering was made illegal under the DMCA.

      No, no, you misunderstand. Ruthlessly exploiting Nature, much like ruthlessly exploiting the public domain, is peachy-keen under the DMCA. Once some giant faceless corporation has learned the secret of the sponge, though, then that gets the full draconian protection.

      If we did it your way, how ever would our cartels prosper?

    • No you can do it, but after the first person does, you can sure as hell bet you'll never be able to do it again, for better or for worse. (Your methods for better or for worse, not the fact. The fact is for worse.)

      The planet earth is doomed.

  • Great... (Score:4, Funny)

    by MoThugz ( 560556 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:12PM (#6750429) Homepage
    yet another specie we can drive to extinction in the name of technology.

    But seriously, won't this sponge smell funny especially when trunking it in dark and dry spaces like under floorings?

    Just a thought.
    • yet another
      specie [m-w.com] we can drive to extinction in the name of technology.


      Yes, the whole dot-com thing was a fiasco. I don't think any currencies were actually compeltely wiped out. Get over it.

      I have no idea what this has to do with sponges or fiber optics.

      -Peter
    • Blockquoth the poster:

      yet another specie [sic] we can drive to extinction in the name of technology.

      Like humanity has ever needed a reason to drive another species to extinction...

  • Space or oceans? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:12PM (#6750432) Homepage Journal
    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? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Qrlx ( 258924 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:21PM (#6750495) Homepage Journal
      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 think this is for two reasons. First is the environmental effects. Very few people seem to care what we do to space, but if were kill a single cell of Prussian Fire-Itch Fart Grass (which doesn't even exist) there are big protests and such. Messing with the oceans is not easy especialy since there are international treaties that you have to abide be.

      Second is on the technical side. Which is easier? Designing something to withstand one atmosphere of pressure (holding an atmosphere in) and a bunch of heat

    • Now, this is the sort of thing that makes you wonder why we spend so little effort studying our oceans.

      Maybe it's because we're too busy exterminating the life in said oceans.
    • wonder why we spend so little effort studying our oceans.

      Deep sea diving doesn't get you laid like riding thousands of pounds of burning rocket fuel into LEO. I bet those astronauts live like Wilt Chamberlain when they're back on the ground.

  • How Did They Figure This Out... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:13PM (#6750433)
    EE 1: We need a better fiberoptic cable.
    EE 2: Let's look at organisms deep in the ocean!
    EE 1: That's just crazy enough to work!

  • pressurized cables (Score:2, Insightful)

    by macbot3000 ( 562097 )
    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?

  • More fracture resistant than commercial fibers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Phiz ( 21461 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:14PM (#6750439)
    The paper in Nature about on this research says the sponge fibers are more fracture resistant than commercial fibers because of a layer of organic ligands at the fiber's exterior. Now if we can just genetically engineer them to grow a few hundered miles in length...

  • So... (Score:3, Funny)

    by paul248 ( 536459 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:14PM (#6750445) Homepage
    Does anyone know where I can pick up some Athlon seeds?

  • I wonder.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Penguin Follower ( 576525 ) <[scrose1978] [at] [gmail.com]> on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:17PM (#6750467) Journal
    ... 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.

    • Re:I wonder.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by way2trivial ( 601132 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:26PM (#6750531) Homepage Journal
      and if they could reproduce what spiders do, we'd have a skyhook and lightweight bulletproof jackets. and the brookly bridge suspension cables would be as thick as a pencil

      and if they could reproduce what bees' do, a flying machine that weighs half a gram and sees what's going on.

      and if they could synthesize what chickens do, you could eat things out of my ass

      just that we know it exists, doesn't mean it can be synthesized (ot should be)

      • Oh yeah? (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by oogoliegoogolie ( 635356 )
        You think nature is so smart. Bah! Nature can't destroy, pollute, and decimate the planet as fast as we can, so there. What took 500+ million years to develop, we can eradicate and wipe out in decades. Barring an outside influence such as a nearby supernova or a 30 km asteroid impact, let's see mother nature match that!

        We got mother nature by the balls...er...titties!
        • You think nature is so smart. Bah! Nature can't destroy, pollute, and decimate the planet as fast as we can, so there. What took 500+ million years to develop, we can eradicate and wipe out in decades. Barring an outside influence such as a nearby supernova or a 30 km asteroid impact, let's see mother nature match that!

          Actually, scientists believe there have been half-a-dozen or so mass extinctions. The latest one, the one where the dinosaurs bit it, was nothing compared to the Permian which supposedly
      • and if they could synthesize what chickens do, you could eat things out of my ass

        This just cries out for a Tubgirl link.
      • and if they could synthesize what chickens do, you could eat things out of my ass

        I believe this very thing was tried here on slashdot with the writings of one Jon Katz. It might have worked, but it was too easy to tell where he was pulling that stuff from.

  • Why (Score:4, Interesting)

    by slasher_14 ( 619465 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:17PM (#6750469)
    Nature does things for a reason...I wonder why this creature uses fibre optic to anchor itself to the ocean floor. I doubt it is using the fibre optic to communicate...Perhaps it is using it because it happens to also be very flexible and strong at the same time, the fact that it could also be used for transporting light is a co-incidence.

    • Re:Why (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ratfynk ( 456467 )
      Bioluminesence is a key survival adaptation in the Ocean. I would suspect that these sponges use this for display/territorial mating purposes. This is in essence the ultimate form of communication. Kind of an Ocean bottom laser rock concert where the participants get turned on or off by the flashing lights. Kind of works with humans too!

      What is more interesting to me is; What are the chemical light trigger mechanisms? Could these be used in switching? Sort of a biochem based switching device. There is muc

      • Re:Why (Score:3, Informative)

        by Exiler ( 589908 )
        As a general guess I'm going to venture that these things are asexual, being sponges, and it's not for mating displays. but then again, I couldn't RTFA 'cos it's slashdotted
        • I mean timing for egg and sperm release, also I do not mean to see light I mean to sense light. It seems to me that there are many mechanisms involed and they are certainly worth studying!

          Why do I talk to myself so much...Because sometimes it is the only way to carry on an intelligent conversation

        • Since when has being asexual stopped humans from putting on a display, for that matter whats love got to do with it. I am talking about fundimental reproductive cycles and (so called) primitive methods and techniques.

  • Spongebob Glasspants? (Score:5, Funny)

    by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary&yahoo,com> on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:18PM (#6750472) Journal
    Who makes fiberglass cables under the sea?
    SPONGEBOB GLASSPANTS!
    Flexible, clear, with sodium has he.
    SPONGEBOB GLASSPANTS!
    If flexible fibers be something you wish,
    Dive under the ocean and look for some fish!

  • Looting nature (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mittermeyer ( 195358 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:19PM (#6750477) Homepage
    This is why we shouldn't just cream the biosphere- who knows how many absolutely cool techs lurk under the rocks.
  • On one hand, it's amazing that we can use things that developed naturally to enhance our lives and assist our technological growth. OTOH, it distresses me that the mindset is becoming more prevalent that the only reason to value the natural world is because of what the things we find there can do to enhance our lives and further our technology.

    [sarcasm] Silly me. I'd forgotten that it's unfashionable to appreciate a tree (flower, sponge, animal) for its own sake and nothing else. [/sarcasm]

    Snarky comments

  • I live on a blue nest of CAT5 you insensitive clod! [fruhead.com]

  • I think Steven Wright said it best: (Score:5, Funny)

    by EvilFrog ( 559066 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:26PM (#6750536)
    "Sponges grow in the ocean. That kills me. Make's me wonder how much deeper it'd be if that didn't happen."

  • Sponges? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by devphaeton ( 695736 )
    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...

  • Science Fact? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Starquake ( 245822 )
    Frank Herbert wrote about the exact same thing in his book "The Ascension Factor." Only there it was sentient kelp. The coolest part was how the kelp could create ultra realistic holograms. Wouldn't that be an interesting twist on display technology?

  • That must suck (Score:3, Funny)

    by LS ( 57954 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:48PM (#6750666) Homepage
    Thank god aliens haven't discovered that humans grow the best spligduglizacks.

    LS

  • We will NOT hunt this sponge to extinction. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

  • Ought Oh (Score:2, Funny)

    by JoeShmoe950 ( 605274 )
    I hope this isn't in any way related to sponge bob :-)

  • We probably have a while to go (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @08:55PM (#6750717) Journal
    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.

  • Tangent, Go!

    Obviously, you couldn't patent the invention of banging two rocks together, since our ancestors did it.

    Sponges are the most primitive Metazoans (multicelled organisms.) All animal life is descended from one sort or another of Sponge.

    Our closest single-celled relatives are little buggers called Choanoflagellates, [berkeley.edu] by the way.

    Did the particular sponges from which we are descended make this stuff, I wonder? Probably not, since they presumably lived in relatively shallow salt water before evolvin

  • Bell labs? (Score:3, Funny)

    by theflea ( 585612 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @09:06PM (#6750786)
    Great. 25 years from now, some company from Utah will be demanding I purchase a license to wash my dishes.
  • No matter how amazing these natural optic fibers are, coding during bath time is NOT a good idea...
    That's why I have my rubber ducky with 802.11b support...
  • ...that god-awful Sponge-Bob parody video from AlbinoBlackSheep.com stuck in my head...
  • I'm a techie, and I find stuff like this interesting of course -- I love the idea of optical communication, personally.

    But I really fear that a sea creature such as this could be exploited. Imagine there's another tech boom, and everyone's out to capture these thingies. Is it really worth wiping out species just so we can get faster porn?

  • what I really want to know is... (Score:3, Funny)

    by confusion ( 14388 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @09:29PM (#6750935) Homepage
    what made them try?
    "Hey Bob, we got another load of crap from the bottom on that trawl. want me to throw it overboard?"
    "Nah, let's try hooking part of it up to our router and see what happens!"

    Those clever scientists never cease to amaze me.
  • som OSS zealot will soon call for god to GNU GPL sponges.
  • I always knew Sponge Bob Squarepants worked for Nortel! ;-)

    -psy

  • Index of Refraction? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lostchicken ( 226656 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @10:49PM (#6751365)
    What's the index of refraction, as compared to glass fibre? This is one of the factors that limits flexability, and is really quite important.

  • Where Japan SHOULD direct funding... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by whatch durrin ( 563265 ) on Wednesday August 20, 2003 @11:28PM (#6751570)
    And Japan wants to spend how many gazillions [slashdot.org] on space exploration?

    This is one reason why we should be keeping more of the research money on terra firma. As far as helping humankind, the oceans have much more to offer than Mars or a passing meteor or a distant galaxy (at least at this point). I'm not saying that stuff isn't academically enriching, but it doesn't (directly) solve our earth-bound problems.

  • Bending Fibre Optics (Score:4, Informative)

    by ajs318 ( 655362 ) <sd_resp2NO@SPAMearthshod.co.uk> on Thursday August 21, 2003 @06:36AM (#6753116)
    The thing about bending fibre optics that nobody ever points out, is that if you bend even an infinitely-elastic fibre optic through too tight a curve, then you will get light leakage.

    Fibre optics work on the principle of total internal reflection. The angle at which the light strikes the interface between glass and air is too shallow for it to get refracted out into the air, so instead it bounces off. As far as a beam of light is concerned, a length of fibre optic is just like a tube whose inside walls have a perfect mirror finish.

    If you put a tight enough bend into the fibre, then the light will no longer be striking at an unrefractable angle, and therefore will escape. {You can try this with cheap 1mm. acrylic fibre if you remove the outer jacket and warm it in a pan of boiling water}.

    Now, glass fibres exhibit very nice thermoplastic behaviour, and can actually be bent without breaking to tighter radii than acrylic. Unfortunately, they begin leaking light long before they break .....

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