What’s inside the Undersea Internet Cable?

If you’ve ever wondered how the internet reaches all the way around the world, we have a least part of the answer for you, and while it’s certainly cool to see, it’s not quite a science fiction-y as I expected.

The guys from the awesome What’s Inside? channel managed to source a few feet of the cable that runs across the ocean and, as they do with everything they get their hands on, they cut it open to take a look at what’s inside, hence the name of their channel. Instead of a bunch of brightly colored wires and actual lightning – you know good and well you pictured some lightning inside that cable, don’t even try to lie! – there is mostly just protection. The actual internet cables run through the center of all of these layers of protection and are actually a few fiber optic cables that look more like hairs than wires that are carrying all of the data of the internet from one continent to the other. However, thanks to modern technology and some kind of ridiculous voodoo magic…

No? No voodoo? Just technology? Okay.

So there’s no black magic going on, just the insane technology that allows people on opposite sides of the ocean to communicate with one another through these ridiculous small fibers that literally transmit information at the speed of light across thousands of miles, creating a connection that literally changes lives every day.

There are links in the video to the channel of the ladies who actually procured the cable, Nat and Lo. They sent on a mission to find the cable itself, finally tracking down a ship that was about to set out to lay the internet across the ocean. Being the attractive and intelligent young ladies that they are, they obviously had no problem talking the crew into handing over a section of the cable to bring back to New York to be chopped up like heavy metal sushi.