What are glass sponges and how can they build skeletons stronger than fiberglass?

The answer

Glass sponges (class Hexactinellida) build their skeletons from silica spicules - glass fibers as thin as a human hair with remarkable optical and structural properties. The Venus' flower basket (Euplectella aspergillum), found at 100 to 1,000 meters depth, constructs a lattice structure that engineers at Bell Labs found transmits light more efficiently than commercial fiber optics. Their hierarchical architecture - from nanoscale layers to centimeter-scale lattice - provides exceptional strength with minimal material. In 2021, Harvard researchers demonstrated that the sponge's diagonal reinforcement pattern outperforms conventional engineering lattice designs. Some reef-building glass sponge communities off British Columbia are estimated to be 9,000 years old. These reefs, covering 700 square kilometers, were thought to have gone extinct 40 million years ago until their rediscovery in 1987.