Posted on 01/06/2013 9:04:59 PM PST by LibWhacker
Most cultural institutions and research laboratories still rely on magnetic tape to archive their collections. Hitachi recently announced that it has developed a medium that can outlast not only this old-school format but also CDs, DVDs, hard drives and MP3s.
The electronics giant partnered with Kyoto University's Kiyotaka Miura to develop “semiperpetual” slivers of quartz glass that Hitachi says can preserve information for hundreds of millions of years with virtually no degradation.
The prototype is made of a square of quartz two centimeters wide and two millimeters thick. It houses four layers of dots that are created with a femtosecond laser, which produces extremely short pulses of light. The dots represent information in binary form, a standard that should be comprehensible even in the distant future and can be read with a basic optical microscope. Because the layers are embedded, surface erosion would not affect them.
The medium has a storage density slightly better than that of a CD. Additional layers could be added, which would increase the density. But the medium is more remarkable for its durability. It is waterproof and resistant to chemicals and weathering, and it was undamaged when exposed to 1,000-degree heat for two hours in a test. The results of that experiment led Hitachi to conclude that the quartz data could last hundreds of eons.
“If both readers and writers can be produced at a reasonable price, this has the potential to greatly change archival storage systems,” says Ethan Miller, director for the Center for Research in Intelligent Storage at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The medium could be ideal for safekeeping a civilization's most vital information, museum holdings or sacred texts. The question is whether the world as we know it would even last that long. “Pangaea broke up less than several hundred million years ago,” Miller adds. “Many quartz-based rocks from that time are now sand on our beaches—how would this quartz medium fare any differently?”
In before the Indiana Jones reference.
Fascinating.
Quartz lasts the test of time and it does sing.
OPI. Ping.
In before the Superman / Krypton reference.
It is of note that the entire data world we take for granted now falls back on the lowly quartz crystal for its piezoelectric quality’s.
A small bit of quartz stimulated with voltage sings and becomes a clock to clock all our digital data.
Lord your world is so wonderful.
Awesome! I’ll never lose my Jersey Shore episodes now!
CAIR and other Muslim apologists will be greatly displeased witth data storage on quartz. Muslims burned libraries everywhere they went, whenever they could.
Imagine a Goat F*cker, oops, Muslim trying to burn quartz.
;-)
Yes, but synthetic diamond is becoming more common. Relatively cheap 20X20X2 mm clear pieces are well within the realm of possibility before the end of the decade.
☺
As a (retired) chip-maker, I've often wondered if we should look for a form of sub-micron communications from previous or alien intelligent sources?
I contributed to the making of chips that are about to leave the solar system on the Voyager space craft. I wonder where they'll be 100 million years from now? Will someone find them one day?
SunkenCiv, want to get a SEM and begin doing some micro archaeology?
On The Moon!
Pow!
I just went to YouTube. He yodels too. You can keep your 8-trac though. I don’t want it.
2 mm thick, 120 mm Ø optically clear diamond is already on the market:
http://www.diamond-materials.com/EN/products/disks_films_membranes/disks.htm
Dude. 8-track is planned obsolescence. The tape rubs against itself internally and eventually the lubricant wears out and then you got no Montana Slim.
Get it onto a cassette, pronto.
BOOKbumpBOOK
>> oops, Muslim
Nah, you had it right the first time.
Why?
:)
More likely L. Ron Hubbard’s The Tech™ will go Diamond first!
Egad. 300 million years from now some bug-eyed monster will hold up a glittering object in its tentacle and say "This is BilltheDrill, and this is his porn." It's sort of like immortality.
I contributed to the making of chips that are about to leave the solar system on the Voyager space craft. I wonder where they'll be 100 million years from now? Will someone find them one day?Yep.
Found this:
M-Disc holds your data 'forever,' we go hands-on for a few minutes (video) Hands-on
Only until she’s 33...
Interesting. Time for me to sign off Ernest. Do have a safe healthy upcoming day.
CAIR and other Muslim apologists will be greatly displeased witth data storage on quartz. Muslims burned libraries everywhere they went, whenever they could.
Imagine a Goat F*cker, oops, Muslim trying to burn quartz.
;-)
“If the library contains the quaran, burn it as we already have a copy, if any books are not the Quaran, burn them as they are not the Quaran...” - Quote some SOB mooslimb general...
I have the pack of matches to center it in the player. ;-)
Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.
Any idiot knows MP3s have nothing to do with CDs, DVDs, hard drives, nor any other means of data storage. MP3s are collections of bits. Data storage is where bits are kept. Period.
ARF! We had the same idea. Wonder where the areas for the best candidates are?
Be funny if you found a common crystal scattered about, and all they said were “DON’T LET YOUR EXCHANGE CLASS SELL YOU ON THE USE OF CELLULOSE BASED SHEETS OF MATERIAL AS AN UNBACKED EXCHANGE MEDIUM!”
i think when the aliens hear the recording of joy behar reading “the vagina monologues” that will be the end of us all. /sarc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO5vfudqWw8
Who wouldn’t want to hear it. Now preserverd forever in ‘The Cloud’
Human race won’t be around in 2 million years.
Hard to say that for certain, but that’s the way to bet.
Enough heat and diamond turns into a lump of graphite.
Um...what? Since when are MP3s a storage medium?
And ants will still be ants, with no interest whatsoever in DVD's.......
Yes, but since we have the best congress money can buy, it will still be under copyright!
More like a specification for how data is ordered.
As a means for explaining data sizes to people, it is a useful construct.
I used to use the Bible. The KJV in ASCII is about 5 meg. Take the total size and divide by 5M, and people could actually comprehend approximately how much space that actually is. Works about the same for mp3s. I think most companies estimate about 5M per mp3 when they say a player will hold "10,000 songs" or some such.
I agree with you as using it for a relatable measuring stick, but they listed it with actual storage mediums. The author can’t NOT know what an MP3 is, right?
Don’t know how long the MDisc will last but it is available today:
Found this:
M-Disc holds your data ‘forever,’ we go hands-on for a few minutes (video) Hands-on
Video’s removed from site...
Go here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1zKZISYjZU&feature=player_embedded
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