(saw whirring)
- Here we go.
- Welcome back to What's Inside.
I'm Lincoln, this is Dan.
And today we're gonna cut open
the Undersea Internet Cable.
- So I had this question about five months ago;
where does the Internet come from?
How do you get it?
Does it come from satellites?
Does it come from cables?
Because I think it's pretty fascinating
that you can put a video on the Internet,
and at the same time somebody in England can watch it in 4k
at the same time as somebody in Australia.
About six months ago we met two Googlers.
I don't know if that's what you call them
but they work for Google and they make awesome videos.
They have a YouTube channel called "Nat and Lo".
They asked us if we had the access of Google
and we could ask Google anything that we could cut open,
what would that be?
And I wanna see how the Internet works
and are there cables?
And if so, can we get some of these cables?
And can we cut 'em open?
So today they said that they have
the Undersea Internet Cable for us.
They got us a saw here in New York.
- And we can destroy it.
- And do you think that we can cut into
the cable that goes under the sea for the Internet?
- Probably not. - (laughs) Probably not.
- Because what if a shark came and bit it?
- There's a lot of questions that I have
about this whole thing.
Like how do you take an Internet cable
and put it from San Fransisco, California
all the way to China?
- So here we are,
we're at the YouTube Space in New York City
and we're with my friends Nat and Lo.
- Hey. - Hi.
- We had no idea where those cables were,
how we could get access to them.
So we asked a bunch of people at Google.
Just kept asking another person and another person.
- Finally we hit the jackpot
and someone said, "Well there's an underwater sea cable
that's being made right now,
loaded under a ship and it's gonna be taking off in a week.
This is your one-window time to go and look at it."
And we were like, oh my gosh this is perfect.
So Nat and I booked it up to New Hampshire
and got this amazing tour of the factory
as the cables were being made.
Loaded onto the ship.
One of these boats can carry all the cable you need
to run it across the entire Atlantic ocean.
- [Nat] So the cable that we got to see
being loaded onto the ship
is going and connecting Florida to Brazil.
- People at school,
they say that it runs through satellites.
But now it actually runs through Internet cables?
- So the majority of that traffic
is actually going through these Underwater Sea Cables.
So it's not that we don't use satellites,
we just use them for a very small percentage
of that traffic.
- We'll be able to see what's inside of it
but I wanna cut open our own cross section
and then look inside of it.
And then let's see how this thing works.
- Bring it on it. - Whoop.
- Woah!
- This is like a giant pixie stick.
Lincoln, you ready? - Yeah.
- You think there's candy inside?
- It's super light. (cable thuds)
- [All] (laughs)
- It kinda reminds me of
when you hold a shot put ball or a meteorite.
It's just so dense with metal and with steel
that it's heavier than you think.
That's what this thing is like
which tells me there's going to be
some pretty heavy metal in here.
So when you said earlier that you could take this thing
and it could go from across the entire Atlantic ocean,
there's a boat that has enough.
So when you say that,
you mean this entire thing?
Like the protection, the steel and everything?
They could have a wire this much on one boat?
- Totally, yeah.
- We are learning something new.
I didn't know this, this is fascinating.
Did you guys know this?
I don't know.
Honestly it's a bit bigger than I thought.
And I'm wondering if this
little saw that I bought at the store
is gonna be sufficient for it.
But that's what we do.
(soft upbeat music)
(saw whirring)
- Here we go.
We got it.
Woo!
First of all, are you surprised that we got this done?
- Yeah 'cause they were so confident
that you wouldn't be able to.
- This isn't some giant cable.
It's not like your cable that you see going into your house,
it's the Internet cable that has
this big copper wire that's in it.
The majority of this is just protection.
- [Nat] It has these two layers of galvanized steel.
And then underneath that you have a plastic tube
that is what would be at the deep ocean
where it doesn't need as much protection.
And inside that is this copper sheath,
and that's what powers this.
There's not really power at the bottom of the ocean.
But every 50 miles there are these repeaters
that are these big bulges about this big.
And they amplify the light
so it can travel these thousands of miles.
- Woah. - Actually under the copper,
you can see smaller galvanized steel strands.
Then under that, a small plastic tube
with a bit of gel in it and the glass fiber strands.
- The payload is just basically as thin as Lincoln's hair.
And that's the fiberglass.
So all of this is to protect basically
something as thin as your hair.
- There's a video that I've seen,
I think it's a comedy sketch
where somebody was talking about how we get on an airplane
and if the Internet isn't working
as fast as we want we get all mad.
And then they're like, don't you realize
that you're flying in a metal tube
30 thousand feet above the earth
and you're mad about the Internet not being fast enough?
So if you're at home and your Internet's a little bit slow,
just be grateful.
Because somebody went and laid this all around the world
and put satellites in the sky
just so you could watch your videos.
Between the two videos, we just
barely scratched the surface of this.
- I got a sneak peek of Nat and Lo's video
and it is so educational.
I learned so much on it.
And it was very cool, the adventure that they took.
- While you're over on their channel,
just go get lost for awhile.
And you're going to learn so many things
about the Internet and about Google and about YouTube
that you may not have thought of.
I'm taking this home with me, so.
- [Nat and Lo] (laughs)
- How is that gonna fit in the suitcase?
- Don't worry about that.
- Is anybody in here?
Okay this is a bathroom.
We're in the bathroom.
Somebody is in here, okay.