Nanotech Memory Could Hold Data For 1 Billion Years

Hugh Pickens writes "Digital storage devices have become ubiquitous in our lives but the move to digital storage has raised concerns about the lifetime of the storage media. Now Alex Zettl and his group at the University of California, Berkeley report that they have developed an experimental memory device consisting of a crystalline iron nanoparticle enclosed in a multiwalled carbon nanotube that could have a storage capacity as high as 1 terabyte per square inch and temperature-stability in excess of one billion years. The nanoparticle can be moved through the nanotube by applying a low voltage, writing the device to a binary state represented by the position of the nanoparticle. The state of the device can then be subsequently read by a simple resistance measurement while reversing the nanoparticle's motion allows a memory 'bit' to be rewritten. This creates a programmable memory system that, like a silicon chip, can record digital information and play it back using conventional computer hardware storing data at a high density with a very long lifetime. Details of the process are available at the American Chemical Society for $30."

Comments

Sure it can

[fataugie]

Wow, what a claim. And by the time someone figures out it's bullshit, the guy who made it will be dust long ago.

BRILLIANT!

Re:Sure it can

[morgan_greywolf]

Wow, what a claim. And by the time someone figures out it's bullshit, the guy who made it will be dust long ago.

Bah! I already have a medium that can store data for a billion years. Now you kids can take your newfangled nanotech memory and get off of my lawn!

Re:Sure it can

[hosecoat]

Wow, what a claim. And by the time someone figures out it's bullshit, the guy who made it will be dust long ago.

BRILLIANT!

I hope I turn to dust before my drives die....wait!?

Re:Sure it can

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. The drives will last another three years. You'll have a whole year to turn to dust.

- God

P.S. Arrange for someone to come over to feed your cat on May 12, 2011.

Re:Sure it can

[TheRaven64]

A billion years? It's managed 2205 so far, only 999,997,795 to go...

Finally an archival format we can use.

[Rosyna]

The problem with CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, tapes, and so on is that they have extremely short lifetimes (6 to 3 years for most optical media, 10-20 years for most magnetic media).

This is a solution that would finally allow our civilization's information to last beyond the apocalypse occurring in 2012.

Or think think how long Atlantis was lost to intelligent life...

Re:In 1 billion years...

[fataugie]

Trust me, if you store your Porn collection, some geek in the future will move heaven and earth to get a peek.

It's not a format, it's a medium.

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn the difference.

Sheesh.

So?

[Rik Sweeney]

Nanotech - 1 Billion years
Elephant - Forever

Technology simply cannot compete with mother nature.

Re:Nano this, carbon nano that...

[gt6062b]

This just in, people use buzzwords to sound smart, get funding. I mean seriously, how else are we going to syngerize our companies to their maximum efficiency? It isn't all about the low hanging fruit, you know.

One billion years...

[Talisman]

"A billion years ought to be enough for anybody." - Me

Re:Nano this, carbon nano that...

[Tablizer]

So Nano this and nano that is the new buzzword.

No, Mork from Ork was using it in the mid 70's ("Nano Nano").
       

Hasn't this been done before?

[Ed Avis]

I think there is prior art on this one:

I also have invented a process for creating a rock inside of a computer, one that all of the people in the world could artificially engrave in a tombstone-style text whatever they wish. If built, this rock would enable all people on Earth to store one paragraph or more worth of information that would be permanently stored on the computer. The information stored would outlive the person whom engraved the rock because the rock would be of a 0.8 micron process with 500,000 transistors in the space of a 486 Central Processing Unit. A 486 Central Processing Unit actually has over 800,000 transistors. My design would be more reliable than a 486. Some people may think that a 0.8 micron process is too slow - this is incorrect if it is a 1024 bit or higher processor, then it could do more in increased volume than a smaller processor. The processor would last many hundreds of years and this is why the space shuttle uses similar technology - where failure is not an option. The information engraved in the rock which is purple and blue and marble-like and is black in some areas where the operating system blocks out information that a person may chose to remove from the rock. The information people place on the rock is permanent. Data is stored in the style of something similar to a Nintendo video game cartridge which is Read Only Memory (ROM) and will almost certainly last many lifetimes before failure. The rock is rectangular and information within it could be searched through or zoomed in and out of viewing range. The rock would cost based on the price of data storage media. For instance: an 80 GigaByte hard disk can hold 80 billion characters of information - this would give every single person on Earth approximately 13 characters of information on the rock for about $50 worth of failure prone storage like a personal computer hard disk. The design intentions are to make the rock outlast 10's of lifetimes before repair, to be redundant in all ways and last for eternity. The rock is for love letters, poems, eulogies and anything at all. This rock is free and will remain free and will never cost monetary values to use the contents of it or place information on it. Light from the fiber optic inter-connects would be magnified and sent to to solar panels and then that energy would be used to power the system. It would be electrically efficient. This idea was invented by Shampoo.

Re:A billion years?

[DinDaddy]

You could store instructions for accessing the data right in the device! Then you'd be sure there's a durable copy available.

Screw that...

[denzacar]

Build nano-elephants.

That way we will be combining nano-technology and nature and we will have a device that stores data for billion forevers.

Re:Main problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Ten years ago, hard drives could last ten years
five years ago, hard drives could last five years
two years ago, hard drives could last two years

Aww Shit! The Mayans were right about the end of the world occurring in 2010!!!