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The Explainer VaultDigital & Internet

The Cloud Is Actually at the Bottom of the OCEAN ๐ŸŒŠ๐Ÿ”Œ

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The cloud isn't floating in the sky. Almost all of it sits on the bottom of the ocean.

So when you message another continent, what actually carries your words across an entire ocean?

Not satellites. About ninety-nine percent of all international internet traffic runs through cables on the seafloor. Inside each are glass strands thinner than a hair, carrying your data as pulses of light. The light bounces along the inside of the glass, racing across the seafloor in a fraction of a second. Hundreds of these cables, stretching over a million kilometers, stitch the continents together. Load a site hosted overseas, and your request is almost certainly diving under the sea and back before the page appears.

And these lifelines are shockingly fragile. Ship anchors snap them, and sharks have actually bitten them, gnawing the cables that carry the internet between continents. The cloud you trust with your photos, money, and memories is really a bundle of glass threads in the dark on the ocean floor.

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