They stretch across the ocean. They're three or five
or eight thousand miles in length, and
if the material science and the computational technology
is incredibly complicated, the basic physical process
is shockingly simple. Light goes in on one end of the ocean
and comes out on the other, and it usually comes
from a building called a landing station that's often
tucked away inconspicuously in a little seaside neighborhood,
and there are amplifiers that sit on the ocean floor
that look kind of like bluefin tuna, and every 50 miles
they amplify the signal, and since the rate of transmission
is incredibly fast, the basic unit is a 10-gigabit-per-second
wavelength of light, maybe a thousand times your own
connection, or capable of carrying 10,000 video streams,
but not only that, but you'll put not just one wavelength of light
through one of the fibers, but you'll put maybe
50 or 60 or 70 different wavelengths or colors of light
through a single fiber, and then you'll have maybe
eight fibers in a cable, four going in each direction.
And they're tiny. They're the thickness of a hair.