N THE YEAR 1876 ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL perfected the telephone. Just four years later, he accomplished something even more remarkable. In 1880 Bell and his assistant, Charles Tainter, successfully transmitted the first wireless telephone message using only sunlight, mirrors, and selenium crystals.1
Bell called this new invention a photophone. It worked in a similar manner to the telephone, but the photophone used light as a means of sending information, whereas the telephone relied on electricity. The photophone’s signal was easily disrupted, however, and its unreliability prevented further development. In spite of the problems, Bell correctly believed that the photophone was a more important invention than the telephone, but it took advances in the science of fiber optics nearly 100 years later to prove him right.
Fiber optics is concerned with the transmission of data in the form of light pulses through cables made of purified glass fibers no thicker than a human hair. There is little signal loss, and the information can be transmitted at the speed of light over long distances. Fiber-optic cables can carry 65,000 times more information than conventional copper wires, and they have absolutely revolutionized telecommunications through improvements in telephone service, fax and copy machines, cable and high-definition TV, on-demand video, and high-speed Internet. Every sector of industry has benefited greatly from fiber-optic applications. The recent advances in this technology may seem cutting-edge, but fiber optics have actually been in use since the beginning of life on earth.
Let’s take a look at a few of God’s fiber-optic creations.
“Nature” Ahead of Science
Scientists at Stanford University discovered more than 20 years ago that the stems of sprouting oat, corn, and mung bean plants contain bundles of fiber-optic strands that are vital for growth.2 As soon as the seedlings of these plants break through the ground, their tips gather and send light to the growth center of the plant, which may be more than an inch under the ground. This transmitted light provides energy and stimulates the growth center of the seedlings, preventing retarded development and even plant death.
More surprising is the discovery that some marine sponges utilize amazingly sophisticated construction methods and fiber-optic techniques.3 Sponges are actually colonies of tiny marine animals, and the researchers at Bell Laboratories have discovered that the glass sponge uses principles of engineering (found in textbooks) to construct its intricate, cage-like frame. Joanna Aizenberg, a physical and material chemist at Bell Laboratories, said, “It uses every structural feature we know in mechanical engineering, but at a scale that is 1,000 [or even] 10,000 times smaller. So many things we dream about in industry are already there in nature.”
Sponges Do It Better
The needle-like glass, only about half the thickness of a human hair, is spun into fibers. Infinitely small structural beams made from these bundled fibers are further reinforced by the bracing of additional beams at 45-degree angles for maximum strength. All of the sponge’s skeletal components are layered, producing one of the strongest glasses known.
If sharp bending should cause a crack, it doesn’t penetrate more than a few layers before it stops. In contrast, commercial optical fibers can be very strong, but once a crack starts, their glass will break all the way through. The sponge’s framework also guides light, just as optical fibers do. They emit light in the darkness of the deep from fluorescent bacteria embedded in the glass. (Nobody knows why sponges transmit light, but researchers believe that the light is somehow necessary for survival in their dark world.)
Six hundred feet down in the inky blackness of the frigid Antarctic Ocean, another species of sponge also builds its fiber-optic skeleton with glass.4 It absorbs silica, the main ingredient of glass, from the ocean water. Most astonishing is this sponge’s ability to produce optical glass in the near-freezing temperatures of its ocean home, while human-made optical glass must be produced at more than 3,600°F. Factory-produced optical glass will degrade in water without special coatings, but the sponge’s optical glass works perfectly under the water.
Over the past 10 years, molecular biologist Dan Morse and his research team at the University of California (Santa Barbara) have been studying the way sponges fabricate their glass structure, and they are learning how to make high performance electronic and optical materials as they begin to understand this process.5 They have discovered an incredible core of protein at the center of the sponge’s glass needles that not only initiates the formation of glass, but also controls the shape of the glass that it produces. Elsa Reichmanis, director of Polymer and Organic Materials Research at Bell Laboratories, said, “As scientific research is evolving, we are now starting to understand more of what nature does every day very easily.”
Then There’s the Eye
For many years, Darwinists have pointed out “flaws” in human anatomy to support their arguments for evolution through mutations and natural selection, and the eye has long been one of their favorite targets. Brown University professor Kenneth Miller claims that the vertebrate eye is poorly designed, because any light entering the eye must pass through the nerve layers before reaching the light receptors of the retina.6
Miller maintains that an intelligent designer would never have placed the neural wiring of the retina on the side of incoming light, since this arrangement scatters the light, making our vision less detailed than it would otherwise be, and even causes a blind spot where the wiring is pulled through the retina via the optic nerve that carries visual messages to the brain. Other evolutionists have chimed in over the years with their indictments, decrying the “functionally stupid, backward construction.” To the evolutionists, this stands as clear evidence that no designer exists.
Despite research by ophthalmologists long ago that clearly found evidence supporting the inverted design of the retina, the evolutionists persisted with their attempts to properly “educate” the creationists and anyone else who would listen. These evolutionists would have done well to heed the counsel given in Matthew 7:4: “‘. . . how can you say to your brother, “Let me remove the speck out of your eye”; and look, a plank is in your own eye?’” (NKJV).*
A group of researchers at the Paul-Flechsig Institute of Brain Research at the University of Leipzig in Germany have recently uncovered the primary reason for the “backward” construction of the eye. They found long, funnel-shaped cells in the eye that act as extremely efficient light collectors.7 These Müller cells are literally living optical fibers that act
as an optical plate, maintaining the light signal with no loss, from one side of the retina to the other. Human-made optical plates have simple bundles of optical fibers that collect and transmit light, but the optical plates in the vertebrate eye operate far more effectively. The inverted design of the eye allows the Müller cells to perform the image transfer through the retina with minimal distortion and loss of light while taking up only 20 percent of the space! Andreas Reichenbach, one of the researchers, said, “Nature is so clever. This means there is enough room in the eye for all the neurons and synapses and so on, but still the Müller cells can capture and transmit as much light as possible.”
If this ingenious light-processing technique can be replicated with manufactured optical plates, engineers will be able to fit more of them into the light sensors that are currently in use. More effective light processing could open the door to even more advances in fiber optics. Who knows? Alexander Graham Bell’s wireless photophone may someday make cell phone towers obsolete.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) is recognized today as the father of astronomy. It was Kepler’s belief that God had created a mathematical precision within the universe, and it became his quest to discover that mathematical formula. He went on to establish the science of celestial mechanics, and his laws of planetary motion are the basis of our understanding of the solar system today. Among his many accomplishments, Kepler founded the science of modern optics. He was the first to describe the principles of how a telescope works and explain the process of vision by the refraction of light within the eye.
Kepler was a brilliant mathematician and a devout Christian, and his scientific notes were often mixed with prayers and praise to the Creator. In one of his prayers he said, “I give You thanks, Creator and God, that You have given me this joy in Thy creation, and I rejoice in the works of Your hands.” Kepler firmly believed that he could “only think God’s thoughts after Him,” and he was correct.8
Fiber optics, sponges, and the human eye. What do they have in common? A Creator—that’s what. And He says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, . . . the Almighty” (Rev. 1:8, NKJV).
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*Texts credited to NKJV are from the New King James Version. Copyright ” 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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1A. G. Bell, “On the Production and Reproduction of Sound by Light,” American Journal of Sciences, third series, Vol. XX, no. 118, October 1880, pp. 305-324; also published as “Selenium and the Photophone,” in Nature, September 1880.
2“Optical Properties of Etiolated Plant Tissues,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 1982 May, 79(9): 2902-2906.
3“Chemists Steal Engineering Tricks From Sponges,” Science Daily, September 1, 2005.
4“Soaking Up Rays—A Primitive Marine Creature Has Natural-glass Fibers That Hint at High Tech,” Science News, vol. 160, no. 5, August 4, 2001, p. 77.
5“Marine Sponges Provide Model for Environmentally Friendly Nanoscale Materials Production, Report Scientists at UC Santa Barbara,” University of California Santa Barbara press release, February 25, 2004.
6Jerry Bergman, Ph.D., and Joseph Calkins, M.D., “Is the Backwards Human Retina Evidence of Poor Design?” from The Institute for Creation Research articles / 2476, 2007.
7“Müller Cells Are Living Optical Fibers in the Vertebrate Retina,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, April 30, 2007.
8Christian History Institute, Glimpses no. 67: “Johann Kepler: Letting the Heavens Declare the Glory of God,” 2007.
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Deryl R. Corbit is a
cytologist, and writes from Paradise, California.