A 360TB disc that holds data for more than 1 million years?
I n the future, we might be able to save our history to a glass storage medium that could potentially outlive humankind . The new type of memory also touts mind-blowing specifications, such as 360TB per disc data capacity and the ability to withstand extreme temperatures up to 1,832 Fahrenheit.
By harnessing the power of a speedy femtosecond laser, researchers successfully wrote and read 300KB of data to an everlasting medium that consists of self-assembled nanostructures within fused quartz. Think of it as a real-life version of the memory crystals seen in the old "Superman" movies.
Amazingly, the femtosecond laser, which emits short and powerful pulses of light, can encode data to three layers of nanostructured dots within the glass only five micrometers apart. The researchers claim the femtosecond laser writes data in five dimensions -- a figure based on the size, orientation, and three-dimensional position of the nanostructures. - http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57593154-1/a-360tb-disc-that-holds-data-for-more-than-1-million-years/?ttag=fbwp
For those of you that are DUNE fans, this is reminiscent of the "Ridulian Crystal" Leto II used. If you are not, it's till good news.
3-1/2 inch floppies gave way to (what was big at the time) to 100 MB Zip Disks...until the "click of death" came about. Then CD's were overtaken by DVD's. But if you are a person like me, I'm an internet download freak...saving images, texts even complete web sites long forgotten such as pages of Geocities and Firefly from the late 90's.
A small percentage of DVDs are suffering deteriorating effects, such as;
- cloudy areas (that look like coffee stains), holes, and specs that show up after repeated playings.
- some multi-layered DVDs (DVDs that in which the movie is extremely long or has lots of features on a single disc) seem to be experiencing layer separation or other defects that show up as skips or pixelization when the laser in the DVD player has to switch between the layers.
- Sometimes the DVD player will actually freeze at this point, preventing the playing of the next DVD layer. Much of this may be attributed to lack of quality control at the factory where the DVDs are made.
I'll have to patiently wait now.
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DVDs often produce crappy results . This is quite an advance but is our society ready for this ? Will future [alien?] explorers locate our data and find something like the movie " Forbidden Planet " ?
As important as that is , I am more concerned about inventions . We don't know who invented the wheel but that is no excuse for neglecting the guy who invented the axle or the lubrication needed to make it work . Why does all the credit go to those associated with the movie "Grease" ?!
I wonder where these glass disks will be stored, guaranteed to not be weathered, earthquaked, submerged in water, ice, etc. for a million years. Just a question!
We can't seem to accurately predict the weather for tonight, much less predict where something is going to end up one million years from now...
I personally prefer spice to crystal.
We started with reel to reel magnetic tape, then for the pc we had 8 inch floppies. the 3 1/2 wasn't really floppy, it had a hard shell. My first machine had a 5MB hard drive, which I immediately partioned as I wasn't going to need that much space.
I would think in high caves would be a thought... Maybe not, but that would be an idea. I can't think of any place that could be considered to be "geologically stable". Maybe as time passes, we'll come up with something.
Just looking at the US-- no place out west is good, because if Yellowstone goes, so does it. The plates may survive the heat and temperatures, but would buried under ash and possibly lava, and who knows what's going to come to life in the next 1 million years. No place near the New Madrid Fault is safe, nor on a coast, due to the potential effects of climate change, nor too far north, to avoid an ice age, nor too far south, to avoid sea level rise...
Its a puzzle!