Undersea sponge has fiber optic cables beat

Reuters ^ | 8/20/03 | Reuters Staff

[HiTech RedNeck]

One paleo coming up.

[CJ Wolf]

if we are natural then anything we make is natural.

[1rudeboy]

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

[SquirrelKing]

And in related news:

Undersea Sponge (USSP) +3.25 (+7.6%)
Lucent Technologies (LU) -0.71 (-37.5%)

Ha Ha! I can hear my FA thinking up a strategy now.

[jrawk]

LOL

Excellent!

After a quick & dirty SWOT I propose Lucent use the Promotion P and go after a Opinion Leader like perhaps the marine sponge (http://www.pirweb.org/sponge.htm) and secure their endorsement through sponsorship. The payoff could be huge if other sponges are persuaded to use Lucents Fiber Optics. Why settle for just the human market?

-- lates
-- jrawk

[Chewbacca]

While the sponge may have designed a better fibre optic cable (Betamax) they failed to file a patent for their design.

The current LUCENT (VHS) version wins out because the patent belongs to them.

[Pro-Bush]

While the sponge may have designed a better fibre optic cable (Betamax) they failed to file a patent for their design.

Ah man, why did have to be such a kill-joy? We had a good thing going here.

[Redcloak]

Do they make a PM sponge?

[gcruse]

that is the difference buddy.

My goodness, isn't our back up?  When
a beaver builds a dam, isn't that natural?
When a human builds one, it isn't?

[Pro-Bush]

I see nature can be interpreted many ways. A fiber optic cable that Lucent builds using a variety of technologies does not naturally occur in nature. Using your definition everything is natural.

Why do some food product claim that they are all natural?

It is because there are no preseratives, which are not natural.

You see, two different interpretations of the same word.

[CJ Wolf]

"Why do some food product claim that they are all natural?"
Because people like you dont understand things and believe the claims and buy it because it's "natural".

[Pro-Bush]

You're too funny.

[Axenolith]

EVERYTHING of this earth, or the known Universe for that matter, is natural. A skyscraper, or a car, is no more "unnatural" than an anthill, termite mound or a crab fitting a shell on its back.

Degree of sophistication or tool using capability has absolutly no relationship to "naturalness" and to imply that creations of man are unnatural wades one into the greenpeace logic zone...

[Axenolith]

I wonder which costs less when you wrongle out 20 or 30 feet of it with the 8 inch hollow stem auger :)

[CJ Wolf]

(Scratch and sniff here ------->( ! )<-------- (This really works))

Ewwwe! That's un-natural!

[Pro-Bush]

nat·u·ral
(nchr-l, nchrl) adj.
1) Present in or produced by nature: a natural pearl.
2) Of, relating to, or concerning nature: a natural environment.
3) Conforming to the usual or ordinary course of nature: a natural death.
4)Not produced or changed artificially
5)Characterized by spontaneity and freedom from artificiality
6)Not altered, treated, or disguised

Your "everything is natural" theory is a bunch of crap.

[CJ Wolf]

it's not a theory, bada bing!

[nightdriver]

"Modern technology cannot yet compete with some of the sophisticated optical systems possessed by biological organisms," Joanna Aizenberg and colleagues wrote in their report, published in the journal Nature.

"Here we show that the spicules of the deep-sea 'glass' sponge Euplectella have remarkable fiber-optical properties, which are surprisingly similar to those of commercial telecommunication fibers -- except that the spicules themselves are formed under normal ambient conditions and have some technological advantages over man-made versions."

I don't suppose they actually tested these "spicules" to see what their optical properties are?

You know, dimetrical uniformity, cross-sectional index of refraction profile, decibel-meter transparency - stuff like that?

Yet they make the statement that modern tech cannot compete?

Somehow, that gets my back up. Dunno quite why.

[Pro-Bush]

The Jornal Nature just pulled these claims out of there ass for public comsumption.

[Pro-Bush]

Jornal=Journal