Slashdot Mirror
A Million-Year Hard Disk
sciencehabit writes "Pity the builders of nuclear waste repositories. They have to preserve records of what they've buried and where, not for a few years but for tens of thousands of years, perhaps even millions. Trouble is, no current storage medium lasts that long. Today, Patrick Charton of the French nuclear waste management agency ANDRA presented one possible solution to the problem: a sapphire disk inside which information is engraved using platinum. The prototype shown costs €25,000 to make, but Charton says it will survive for a million years. The aim, Charton says, is to provide 'information for future archaeologists.' But, he concedes: 'We have no idea what language to write it in.'"
It's awl-write.
I'll get me coat.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Consider stone tablets. I head they are cheap, easy to come by, and last a long time.
Those control crystals from SG1.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
For 24,999 they can use my idea.... mosquito legs lined up in binary with tree sap poured over it. It'll last millions of years, with the small glitch of not hardening for some odd millions of those years. Maybe by then they can extract the DNA of the mosquito's and clone some truly exotic animals.... like Pee Wee Herman.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The lingua-franca of tomorrow.
They really need to fuck with the future archaeologists by writing everything in Klingon.
In a few years, we'll be drilling for nuclear waste to power our flying cars! Just like how the cave men buried dinosaur waste, which we now pump out as petroleum to power our driving cars.
Future folks will be overjoyed to find an old nuclear waste dump buried on their property, because they will get rich by fracking it! Sapphire disks will be like old, dusty grizzled-prospectors' maps, and be highly valued.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If my TeeVee has taught me anything, it's that no matter how far into the future or past we go--even if we travel to other worlds--everybody speaks 20th Century English.
A million years? You just the first phrase will be: "I, for one, welcome our future overlords..."
Amusingly that'll also be the first +5 post when Slashdot covers the unearthing of this drive.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
What language? All of them.
They should write it in C -- it'll never go away since it'll always be needed for embedded systems.
Pirate treasure! Let's dig it up!
Yeah, that'll work.
They said readable in a million years, not edible in a million years. Do you really want some redneck to stumble upon the warning twinkie stash a few thousand years from now and swallow all the information? I thought not. ;-)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
In a few years, we'll be drilling for nuclear waste to power our flying cars! Just like how the cave men buried dinosaur waste, which we now pump out as petroleum to power our driving cars.
Thag: "What we write so no one dig here?"
Ugg: "Thag crap here. No one go near it."
Thag: "You funny."
Ugg: "What? Like it matter in 1825 sunrises!"
Thag: "OK, How you spell crap?"
Ugg: "Don't know. Just put small 9 after your name."
Thag: (Draws in the dirt with a stick, then notices his friend's feet) "Hey, where you get boots?"
Ugg: "Made them from fake dead animal."
I think that means civilization will collapse immediate after it's written.
Write failed: Broken pipe
011100110110001101 110010011001010 1110111001000000100 0011001000000111000001110 101011101000010000001101 00101110100001000000 110000101101100011011000010000001 10100101101110001000000110 00100110100101101110011000010111001001111001
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Here's an image of their current prototype sapphire disk.
01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01110011 01110101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01110111 01100101 01110010 01100101 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101111 01101110 01101100 01111001 00100000 01101111 01101110 01100101 01110011 00101110
But, we are asked not for a solution but ,*"Pity the builders of nuclear waste repositories.*
In accordance with their request: "There, there".
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Pictures.
One picture is case civilization has collapsed - skulls, and people on fire.
One picture in case civilization has not collapsed. An orbital model of the atom, with little balls streaming away.
What if the archeologist is not humanoid and is used to a completely different models for atoms/particles? Then let the fucker burn, what do we care about octopi from Alpha Centauri?
And anyway, we still understand Hebrew, Greek and Latin after 2000 years. I would be amazed if civilization endures in 10000 years AND English has been lost.
No good deed goes unpunished...
The ONLY thing that needs to be put onto a million-year hard-drive is
001100 010010 011110 100001 101101 110011
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Some cultures have not taken skulls to be a symbol of death though. In ten thousand years, maybe the primative tribes that survive consider skulls to be a symbol of the cycle of life and renewal or whatever superstious rubbish they have invented by then. They'll run into the storage facility thinking it'll make them young again.
Then they will have a learning experience.
Either way, we've helped future generations. :)