Word: optic
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Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, marine biologists have charted some capricious changes in the feeding habits of sharks. In the past two years, sharks have repeatedly attacked the new 1-in. fiber-optic telephone cable off the Canary Islands. The marauding is expensive: an average cable repair is laborious and costs at least...
What is it about fiber-optic cable? Marine biologists accompanying the repair teams have tried to find out. Along the way, they have learned that sharks generally do not feed below 3,000 ft., thus making it unnecessary to protect cable below that depth. They have also discovered previously unknown species of fish. But they still do not know why the new cable is so appealing. The favored theory: sharks attack the lines after detecting faint electric fields that trigger a feeding reflex. "Who knows why they are attracted to it?" muses Gary Nelson, chief of ichthyology at the American...
...Here" is the middle of the Banana River, near the seaside town of Melbourne. "You could say we've sort of changed our optic. We don't want the house and the big stereo. Instead, we'll travel and work a little, travel and work a little. We also think about making a fortune so we can travel endlessly, but we haven't got very far with that...
Some Wall Street aerospace experts doubt that the satellite-launching business will live up to expectations. One reason: demand may be depressed somewhat by the new fiber-optic cable networks now under construction across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which can handle many transmission needs as well as satellites do. Demand for launches might be reduced further by a new satellite-placement technique introduced last year. A slight change in the way satellites are positioned with respect to the earth is expected to reduce substantially the fuel needed to keep them in the correct orbital slot. If so, new satellites...
...often overcrowded and frequently suffer from static. And satellite connections, which now carry about 60% of transatlantic phone calls, typically produce an echoey sound and an annoying half-second delay because signals must be sent 22,300 miles up to a communications satellite and back down again. Fiber-optic technology, by contrast, delivers a comparatively pure sound. The ultrathin glass fibers in the cable carry information on laser beams of light, which travel with virtually no susceptibility to electronic interference. Long-distance telephone companies have already installed more than 20,000 miles of fiber- optic cables to connect major cities...