Tag: undersea

Simulating early ocean vents shows life’s building blocks form under pressure

Where did life first form on Earth? Some scientists think it could have been around hydrothermal vents that may have existed at the bottom of the ocean 4.5 billion years ago. In a new paper in the journal Astrobiology, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory describe how they mimicked possible ancient undersea environments with a complex experimental setup. They showed that…

Google and Facebook Turn Their Backs On Undersea Cable To China

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google and Facebook seem to have resigned themselves to losing part of the longest and highest profile internet cable they have invested in to date. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission last week, the two companies requested permission to activate the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) between the US and the…

Cut Undersea Cable Plunges Yemen Into Days-Long Internet Outage

Last week, the internet went dark for Yemen and its 28 million citizens. It’s still not fully back today. In fact, the entire Red Sea region has dealt with slow to nonexistent connectivity since the severing of a single submarine cable on Thursday. Wired reports: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Ethiopia all felt major effects from last week’s cut of the…

Why Is Russia’s Suspected Internet Cable Spy Ship In the Mid-Atlantic?

“Russia’s controversial intelligence ship Yantar has been operating in the Caribbean, or mid-Atlantic, since October,” writes defense analyst H I Sutton this week in Forbes. He adds that the ship “is suspected by Western navies of being involved in operations on undersea communications cables.” Significantly, she appears to be avoiding broadcasting her position via AIS (Automated Identification System). I suspect that…

Underwater internet cables can detect offshore earthquakes

Undersea fibre-optic cables for transmitting data can also be used to detect earthquakes and find fault lines offshore Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2224901-underwater-internet-cables-can-detect-offshore-earthquakes/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

The greatest network the world has ever seen: The global internet map

Bundles of undersea fibre optic cables connecting continents form the backbone of the internet – a network that now connects more than half the world Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24432530-500-the-greatest-network-the-world-has-ever-seen-the-global-internet-map/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…

Volcanic eruption creates moveable islands of pumice

Last month, rafts of pumice, spewed from an undersea volcano and spanning an area about the size of Washington, D.C., appeared in the South Pacific. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/pumice-islands-volcanic-eruption…

South Africa, UK Acknowledge Mass Surveillance By Tapping Undersea Internet Cables

The South African government has been conducting mass surveillance on all communications in the country, reports Reclaim the Net:, citing a report from Privacy International as well as recently-revealed affidavits and other documents from former State Security Agency (SSA) director-general Arthur Fraser:
Interestingly, the mass surveillance has been happening since 2008… The surveillance was supposedly designed to cover information about organized crime…

National-Security Concerns Threaten Undersea Data Link Backed by Google, Facebook

U.S. officials are seeking to block an undersea cable backed by Google, Facebook, and a Chinese partner, in a national-security review that could rewrite the rules of internet connectivity between the U.S. and China, WSJ reported Wednesday [Editor’s note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], citing people involved in the discussions. From the report: The Justice Department, which leads a…