Bright future for humble sea worm

by Lisa Cardy

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WHAT lives at the bottom of the sea and is red all over, apart from when it's stripped blue and green It's the humble sea mouse, which is actually an iridescent worm. It has a magical way with light�that researchers predict could help them create a whole new generation of optical fibre, the technology responsible for high speed data transfer in telecommunications.

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The sea mouse, or Aphrodita, has spines that normally appear deep red in colour. But when light falls on a spine at right angles blue and green stripes appear.

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Teams of researchers at the University of Sydney in Australia, and the University of Oxford, have been investigating the mechanism behind the phenomenum. They found that the spines have a microscopic structure of a series of hexagonal tubes. The precise arrangement of the cylinders reflects back the colour red. However, when light was shone at a right angle to the spine the other end of the colour spectrum, blues and greens, were reflected.

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The normal reflection of red is for danger, warning off predators. The sea mouse often lives in very deep water, up to 2,000 metres (6,560 feet) down. Below a few hundred metres little light reaches the ocean floor, so for the spines to be effective they must make best use of every scrap of light available.

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The arrangement is the same as a new type of optical fibre developed at the University of Bath. Understanding the structure of the spines opens up new possibilities within the field of optical fibre communications. Because of their size and design, the hexagonal cylinders in the sea mouse spines perform much more efficiently than man-made optical fibres.