The internet surrounds us every day. Whether you watch videos on YouTube, stream music or play video games, data is almost always being sent and received. Although most of these only travel a short distance to your devices, some data packages have to cover longer distances – sometimes even across several continents.
This is what the internet looks like under the sea
Precisely for such situations, the earth is covered with a dense network of undersea cables. Any of these cables can several terabytes per second transmitted between continents. Since the amount of data that is transmitted is increasing rapidly every year, companies such as Microsoft and Google are now sinking their own undersea cables into the sea.
Most people are probably not aware of how many of these submarine cables there are now. Because the recently published 3D model by the American scientist Tyler Morgan-Wall seems to surprise many. On it you can see: the world-spanning cables in all their glory:
link to Twitter content
Can you view the model on your own PC?
Yes, you can Code of the model on GitHub Download and run the model on your computer at home. In addition to the program code, you also need the Software Environment R and the Package Rayrender. R takes care of the calculation of the data, while Rayrender takes care of the visualization. This is even possible in 4K or higher resolutions with activated ray tracing.
For all those who do not yet have a GPU that supports ray tracing due to the high graphics card prices, we have embedded a video of the model above for you.
The model doesn’t do everything right
Maybe some of you have already noticed: The model in the video turns in the wrong direction! If you take the North Pole as the center, the earth should rotate counterclockwise. Aware users have already corrected the rotation and shared a revised model on Twitter:
link to Twitter content
In reality, the submarine cables are also much narrower. So that the cables are clearly visible on the model, they have a proud diameter of 30 kilometers. Modern submarine cables, on the other hand, are only 25 millimeters thick, but are protected by several centimeter-thick protective layers, among other things protected from shark attacks.
Incidentally, one of the largest data centers in the world is located in Europey. A large part of the European data traffic is transmitted from Frankfurt am Main to the whole world. Europe could also soon play an even bigger role in the international market in other respects:
Sensationsfund
Now Europe also has the most important hardware resource in the world
Did you know that a large portion of internet traffic travels under the sea? Do you want to set up the model for yourself as well? Let us know your thoughts on the topic in the comments!
