Learn about the construction of the undersea fiber optic cables carrying internet data

The 500 subsea cables that run the internet

Subsea cables carry the majority of data sent across the globe on the internet. An estimated 552 such cables—with more in development—lay on the ocean floor, their thickness similar to a garden hose, made up of optic fibers covered in copper.

Explore a searchable map of underwater cables carrying internet traffic worldwide

The Submarine Cable Map provides users with data from TeleGeography's Transport Networks Research Service on individual submarine cables, including cable owners, suppliers, URLs, landing points, lengths, and notes of interest.

The Grace Hopper subsea cable transmits internet traffic across the Atlantic

Running between the US, UK, and Spain, the cable is part of an extensive underwater network of fiber optic connections that transmit data across the world at light speed. Equipped with 16 fiber pairs, the private cable was Google's first-ever subsea connection to Spain.

Around 380 underwater cables power the Internet across the world.

On July 29, 1858, two steam-powered battleships met in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There, they connected two ends of a 4,000 kilometer (2,500 mile) long, 1.5 centimeter (0.6 inch) wide cable, linking for the first time the European and North American continents by telegraph.

View a map of US data center infrastructure in 2025

Thousands of data centers across the country have already been built, with more under construction or planned. Facilities are connected via transmission and fiber optic lines, with the latter spanning an estimated length of 160 million miles.

The internet explained at five levels of difficulty, from protocols to internet flattening

Resembling a roadway with traffic laws that all cars must follow, the internet is the hardware that connects a source to a destination, and these connections must follow specific software rules. Although data had to travel through about 10 networks to reach a destination in the past, data centers increasingly consolidate traffic, just as a highway does for cars, to improve data speeds.

The reflection of light within a material is the basis for fiber optics

As light travels from one material to another, it can be absorbed, reflected, or transmitted through, depending on the properties of the two materials. Fiber optic cables are designed to reflect light internally, minimizing data loss as information is sent at high speeds through flashes that represent zeros and ones.

Essential pipes, sewers, and cables lie buried beneath New York City

The Department of Design and Construction offers a tour of its work sites, explaining the complex systems that exist underground. Gas, electrical, telecom pipes, and many others, sprawl out underneath the entire city, with dozens of maps that help workers know where they're placed. This layout is unusual compared to the rest of the country, where wires are often present and visible above ground.

The Channel Tunnel consists of an underwater network of over 200 kilometers in length

The passage beneath the English Channel between England and France includes three tunnels, crossover chambers, emergency passages, and air ducts. Burrowing teams in either country consistently checked their coordinates to ensure they would meet within two centimeters of each other.

The history of the commercialization of the internet, from ARPANET to NSFNET and beyond

NSFNET was launched in 1986 by the National Science Foundation as the first network available to all researchers, connecting them to a system of supercomputer facilities. Despite growing from 2,000 computers in 1985 to 2 million by 1993, the rapid expansion of commercial internet services led to NSFNET's decommissioning by 1995.

The decline of the landline in the US

It costs 35% less to maintain AT&T's fiber subscribers than it does to keep up its legacy copper lines, a big difference leading the major phone company to plan to end its copper lines by 2030. Tens of millions of households still utilize a landline phone in the US, but they've been trending downward for at least two decades as people have gone wireless. Learn the trends and see the data visualized in this article.

The world's maritime traffic in real-time

More than 50,000 ships are sailing the high seas on any given day, representing the highest volume pathway for international trade. This real-time traffic provides a visual impression of the scale of ocean-bound commerce.

Engineering the Overseas Highway connecting the Florida Keys

A 113-mile series of bridges called the Overseas Highway connects Key West—the southernmost point of the United States—to mainland Florida. The route originally served as a railroad but has required regular reconstruction due to major storms. This video traces the history of the project in fascinating detail.

How the ocean is the new frontier of innovation

Space has been called the final frontier of innovation and investment for decades. Many innovators say the ocean is the new space, the vast majority of whose hidden depths remain obscure. In this podcast episode, business-minded experts discuss the opportunities founders see in the ocean, including seagrass restoration, underwater cable networks, and more.

Which countries have the fastest internet speeds?

Ever wonder about how fast internet speeds are around the world? Take a look at this graphic which lists out the countries with the highest mobile internet speeds in 2023. Countries in the Middle East and East Asia dominate the list while America lags behind in eighteenth place. Learn more about why a high-income country like the US fall behind in speed, and why other countries are internet powerhouses.

Underwater data centers may provide an alternative to energy-intensive air cooling

By submerging electronic hardware into a non-conductive fluid, such as an oil with strong thermal transfer properties, significant thermal energy can be quickly drawn away from a chip and brought to the surface as warm materials rise. Thermal energy can then be removed from the fluid with a heat exchanger before it is recirculated.

Learn about deep water corals and the coral gardens they slowly build in the dark

Found throughout the world's ocean basins at depths beyond 200 meters (660 feet), these corals do not rely on photosynthetic organisms for nutrients and instead rely on food that's fallen from the ocean surface. Beyond forming larger reefs over the course of thousands of years, smaller coral gardens are built with the aid of underwater worms.

Video and still images are combined with sonar data to create seafloor maps

Sonar works by sending thousands of sound pulses per second towards the seafloor, capturing the strength and timing of the returning echo. This data can accurately reveal depth, seafloor texture, and the presence of fish habitats to millimeter resolutions.

Data-packed infographic on Earth's oceans

Did you know more than 200 million people live on land that could be flooded by rising sea levels? Learn fascinating facts about the ocean from this data-filled infographic from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

Explore the animals that populate the depths of the ocean, from fish and coral in the first few hundred feet, all the way down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

A US Department of Defense research lab developed the technology for the dark web

Although encryption existed to mask the content of communications across the internet before the 1990s, those managing overseas network infrastructure could determine a spy's affiliation based on where they saw data sent to and received from. To keep this information secret, the US Naval Research Laboratory developed onion routing, which enabled anonymized web browsing. The release of the technology to the public obscured sensitive communications further by growing the volume of anonymous data.

The NSF funded the design and construction of LIGO by MIT and Caltech

The 1992 Cooperative Agreement between the National Science Foundation and both research institutions came twelve years after funding 1.5-meter (4.9-foot) and 40-meter (131-foot) prototypes. With a 1992 budget of $395M, LIGO was once one of the largest NSF-funded projects in history

The Deep Space Network keeps NASA linked to spacecraft billions of miles away

NASA's DSN is a global system of giant radio antennas that receive data from faraway spacecraft like Voyager 1 and the James Webb Space Telescope. It is sensitive enough to detect a signal as weak as a single light bulb from billions of miles away.

Offshore wind turbines are built like giant modular puzzles at sea

Due to their enormous size, turbines are assembled in parts on-site using prefab components, advanced cranes, and vibration-dampening systems to manage the dynamic ocean environment. Three-blade turbines became the norm because even-numbered blades create damaging vibrations.

A breakdown of net neutrality, including its benefits and disadvantages

The principle dictates that all internet traffic should be treated equally by internet service providers and that they cannot block, slow, or charge more fees for access to specific webpages. This would help ensure equal access to the internet and prevent larger companies from paying to prioritize access to their content, but it would require greater government intervention.

Wormholes, though unstable, would offer a theoretical shortcut through spacetime

These hypothetical distortions in the fabric of spacetime may connect vast distances across or even between universes. While science fiction often portrays them as traversable tunnels, the energy and matter required to keep a wormhole open defy current physical understanding.

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

In 1915, workers recovered a submarine-like vessel from the Chicago River, prompting fears of German espionage

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

An investigation suggests a Scottish island became awash in forever chemicals via seafoam and seaspray—raising questions about what that means for the safety of other coastal areas.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Power lines are dotted with large, brightly colored balls to improve the visibility of these thin wires to helicopters and small planes and help prevent potential crashes.

Corals are themselves not coral reefs—the term refers to the tiny marine invertebrates that build the rigid reef.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

About 2,000 US babies are born annually without some portion of their limbs, potentially leading to a lifetime of pricey prosthetics.

The US dollar is the most widely circulated currency in the world, and is involved in nearly 90% of global transactions

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Ebola is a filovirus, meaning it resembles a thread under a microscope, though it sometimes twists and can resemble a bowl of spaghetti.

Hedge funds, the private investment firms that trade a wide swath of financial assets, make money by imposing steep fees on investors and from the fund's investment performance.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

The most expensive ad of all time was for Chanel No. 5 perfume and cost roughly $33M to produce in 2004—about $57M in today's dollars.

Pure water does not conduct electricity because this flow of energy requires the movement of charged particles, and water is a neutral molecule.

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

The syncytiotrophoblast is the outer layer of the placenta and the largest human cell, spanning an area about twice that of a king-sized bedsheet.

Budweiser stores yeast derived from the original 1800s strain in a secret bunker, which only the Head of Yeast Management can access—not even the CEO