Posted on 09/18/2015 1:09:39 PM PDT by beaversmom
Animated map shows the undersea cables that power the internet
Incredible.
I guess I am naive but I was shocked to learn that America has a lot of underwater speakers around the world.
Interesting. Would be interested in knowing more.
True, there is Jimmy Hoffa, Osama Bin Laden, a ton from the Neptune society and so forth.
BFL
I should have said microphones. Don’t know if they are still in use but I found this article
Scientists Object As Navy Retires Ocean Listening System
June 12, 1994|By New York Times News Service.
8
The Navy, facing increasingly tight budgets, is shutting down most of a $16 billion system that spied on enemy ships and submarines for decades by monitoring their undersea sounds. But scientists are fighting to save as much of the network as possible for environmental research and other civilian uses.
In a post-Cold War windfall, scientists and federal experts have been using the system to track whales, spy on illegal fishing, monitor earthquakes and volcanoes at sea and look for shifts in ocean temperature that could portend climatic trouble.
“It’s ridiculous to throw away a $16 billion investment when it’s got so many uses for mankind,” said Adm. James Watkins, a former chief of naval operations who is now president of the Joint Oceanographic Institutions, a Washington-based consortium of universities and research groups that study the seas.
The Sound Surveillance System, or Sosus, was used during the Cold War exclusively to track the ships and submarines of America’s foes.
Started in secrecy in the mid-1950s, it spans the globe with a network of more than 1,000 underwater microphones grouped in arrays and tied to Navy shore stations by some 30,000 miles of undersea cables. It can track undersea sounds over hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles of ocean.
With military budgets shrinking fast, the Navy has quietly begun cutting maintenance, closing shore stations and preparing to dismantle or mothball about 80 percent of the undersea arrays, Navy officials say.
Wow, on the price!
Reminds me of that book by Simon Winchester, "Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded, August 27, 1883," where that natural disaster is described in the context of the beginnings of world-wide news communication. People all over the world read and received updates and basic information about the eruption almost instantly, slowed only be the "last mile" of print media.
Anyone who has researched Napoleon's "100 Days," in 1815 in any depth now knows that Tambora's eruption, at least an order of magnitude more powerful than Krakatoa, occurred only a couple of months before Waterloo, and no one on or around the battlefield had any interest or much information about that catastrophe, though it had a lasting effect on climate a year later, "the year without a summer."
The difference between Tambora and Krakatoa, though the former was more objectively powerful and lasting in its effect, was undersea cables.
The world as we know it did not begin with computer-mediated documents and HTML. It began with "What hath God wrought."
bfl
We should cut the ones going to Nigeria. That would shut down those scammers.
Did you enjoy that book? I always wanted to read it. It was on a list of books to read for geology class this semester, but I ended up getting out of the class. I heard that SW is not a good writer, though.
As cool as that is I’m guessing it is pretty basic compared to the connections on dry land.
I read another of his books, I forget which, his writing was so-so but he takes on interesting subjects. Am ordering the Krakatoa book now. Have been meaning to for months.
Later
Thank you...interesting read!
Yet, somehow we can’t build a border wall...
Great point. The sky’s the limit, but a wall that works is impossible.
Keep in on your list.
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