This Is Pictures.

[Peterkaczynski]

This Is Pictures.

lol hate to sound like a creeper, but I've def seen you and your cars over on 4chan's /o/ forum, I always thought I was one of the few who actually used that site. clean shark for sure

Ha really? Toss the link up, I haven't been on 4chan since high school

[george graves]

It's a series of tubes. Well kinda.



These are underwater cables. Laying a cable from one continent to another is somehow cheaper then bouncing data off a satellite. But the engineering that goes into the cable is remarkable. It's a few fiber optic strands, shielded in steal, inside a copper tube, inside a more steal.

So let's talk about Light. Light is really really cool in that there are a ton of ways to cram a lot of light into a very small area.
First off, there are colors to light. I'm sure you've heard things like wavelength and such when you talk about colors of light. The color of light corresponds to the wavelength of the bits of light flying through the air. Each bit of light, called a photon, acts as a wave (like a cross-section of an ocean wave) as it flies through the air. Depending on how rapidly that wave moves back and forth the color of the light is different.
This is why rainbows always have the exact same order, red on the outside and violet on the inside. Red colors (and infrared, which is outside our visible light spectrum) are longer wavelengths than violet (and ultraviolet, on the other outside of our visible light spectrum). The red in a rainbow bends less than the purple in the rainbow, which is why it's always on the longer side. Neat right?
So we have laser diodes that can produce a very very specific color of light output. Not just blue, but VERY SPECIFICALLY 473 nanometer wavelength particles of light. We can then make a detector that detects ONLY 473 nanometer wavelength particles of light. So now I hand you a piece of fibre optic cable and walk into the other room. I shine my laser into the cable, and the laser beam comes out the other end. You hook up the detector and the detector tells you that, yes! There's light coming through the cable at 473nm.
Now I pick up my green laser and shine it through the cable. You can see it, but the detector can't detect it! The wavelength of my green laser is closer to 532nm, so the detector doesn't recognize it. I hand you a new detector that detects at 532nm and you set them both up at your end of the cable. I shine both my lasers through the cable, and they both detect. Neat right?
With modern technology that goes into these kind of lasers, we can create a whole bunch of different laser colors to cram into a single cable. Instead of jumping from 473 to 532nm, we can go 473, 479, 486, etc. etc. all the way through. So now instead of sending just one single bit at a time, we have many different channels to communicate through.
But the color of light is only one way of handling it. Fibre optics work due to a process called total internal reflection. What this means is when I shine my laser down the cable almost(99.99-something%) of the light comes out the other end. But get this: It comes out at the same angle it went in. If I shine my laser straight into the end of the fibre cable, it'll come straight out your end. If I shine it at 3 degrees off from straight in, it will come out your end at 3 degrees off. I'm sure you've seen someone use a laser pointer, it comes out in a single point of light. The light is coherent, so it stays in the same straight line pattern. We can abuse this feature of light and fibre optics too!
Now instead of just one 473nm detector, I hand you an entire array of them. There are 4 detectors at 1 degree off in each direction I can offset at: 1 degree up, 1 degree down, 1 degree left and 1 degree right. I have a laser setup that lets me send in laser light pulses at various degrees of offset as well. Now I can cram a whole bunch of angles of offset as well as different colors too.
And of course, we can turn the laser pulses on and off at extremely high rates of speed. When you load a webpage from Central Europe it's only a certain amount of data. When your data gets shot through the pipe it's done, and we can use that channel for someone else's data.
Now all of this is specific to the varieties of optical fibre you're using. Multi-mode fibre is mostly used for shorter distances as there is some loss when you start going way off of dead-on into the cable. Undersea cables are more likely to be single-mode optical fibre simply because you can go farther with them.
There's plenty of math that goes along with all of these various bits of information, and you can't really cram a ton of colors into a single cable simply because they will interfere with one another and degrade faster. Shorter runs can use LEDs for light sources instead of lasers for cost purposes as well. There's a ton of engineering that goes into these.

See a larger version or visit the interactive version of the 2014 Submarine Cable Map.

[15Michaeljoseph]

--Mike

[ST1G]

Possibly the great contribution to the picture thread of all time. That is pure, unadulterated art in photograph form.

[LowR3V'in]

I have never seen such beautiful photography it really says something about human kind.
Are you a professional or just a shutter bug?

[phreshkid]

--Mike

I've been divorced for 8 years and this photo broke me down to the bone. I then called my ex-wife to apologize for everything. We are now back together and she is pregnant with twins.


Thank you watermelon man, you saved my marriage and we are have twins.

[george graves]

[LowR3V'in]

And for all the money that's been put into breast cancer there isn't shit happening except
for just cutting them off. Don't donate, it does nothing.

[15Michaeljoseph]

I have never seen such beautiful photography it really says something about human kind.
Are you a professional or just a shutter bug?

I'm more of a shutter bug, I do shoots for an underground club. It's all in the model's pose and lighting. I'm glad you could appreciate the mood of the piece, I should show you my samples from the apple and grapes shoot.


--Mike

[bikerbill2021]

Ha really? Toss the link up, I haven't been on 4chan since high school

ha thats strange, i swear i remember seeing some thread on there and your e24, the same jeep thats in your avatar, and an e30 were all in a picture. sadly the link is gone or id post it

[Peterkaczynski]

Lol maybe someone posted it

[george graves]

I wonder how far and wide this thread has gone. I've yet to see a better collection of random photos anywhere (well, maybe Reddit is bigger....)

Anyways....this list would not be complete without the first real picture ever posted on the interwebs. As I understand it, this is a girl band of the wives of CERN physicist and engineers tried of their hubbies spending all the time at work. So they made and sexy band, and would perform at company functions to get their attention.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9391110/How-the-first-photo-was-posted-on-the-Web-20-years-ago.html

Les Horribles Cernettes (French pronunciation: [lezɔʁiblə sɛːʁˈnɛt], "The Horrible CERN Girls") was an all-female parody pop group, self-labelled "the one and only High Energy Rock Band", founded by employees of CERN which performed at CERN and other HEP related events. Their musical style is often described as doo-wop. The initials of their name, LHC, are the same as those of the Large Hadron Collider which was later built at CERN.[1][2][3]

[george graves]

Spot the problem....

[econti]

An inspiring porno starring two transvestites

[monticello]

The names are above the wrong person.