Giant rogue waves like the kind popularized in the George Clooney movie The Perfect Storm could be predictable thanks to new research on light in fiber optic cables.

Reporting in the journal Nature Physics, an international collaboration of scientists have created the first huge, solitary wave made from lots of little waves that can maintain its size and speed over long distances in the lab.

While sailors might call these waves scary, scientists have named them Peregrine solitons. With the help of meteorologists, giant, ship-sinking waves could be found and tracked in the open ocean, sparing ocean-going vessels and their crew.

"This is an especially important result for understanding how high-intensity rogue waves may form in the very noisy and imperfect environment of the open ocean," said Nail Akhmediev, one of the study's co-authors and a scientist at the Australian National University. [ MSNBC NEWS ]