A Million-Year Hard Disk

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Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 12, 2012 @11:27AM from the sapphires-are-forever dept.

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.'"

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easy answer. by the+biologist · 2012-07-12 11:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

What language? All of them.
1. Re:easy answer. by sapphire+wyvern · 2012-07-12 12:59 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Yes. Write down the same text in, say, the top 10 major modern languages and writing systems (let's say, English, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, French, Russian, Japanese etc).
  Maybe include a concise dictionary of each language as well.
  That way, even if the thing doesn't end up being useful for its designated purpose as a nuclear site marker, it may one day in the far future serve as a Rosetta Stone for the languages and writing systems of our era.
Re:If ancient people taught us anything... by hawguy · 2012-07-12 12:08 · Score: 5, Insightful

Consider stone tablets. I head they are cheap, easy to come by, and last a long time.
They are only cheap if you need a few of them. Each sapphire disk holds 40,000 pages, and the prototype with 2 disks costs "only" €25,000.
Can you make and engrave a stone tablet for less than €0.30?
Re:If ancient people taught us anything... by similar_name · 2012-07-12 12:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

At this moment your post is modded down '-1 overrated' to give your post a score of zero. IMO /. has had an increasing number of unjustified negative mods. Your post is on-topic and reasonable. You don't have a 6 digit ID (neither do I) but you're a million away from all of the 2.6 million ID trolls and shills and your comment history doesn't indicate you're a nuisance that needs to be modded down all of the time (the last zero score post I see by you is equally baffling). Hopefully someone will come along and at least mod you back to your natural score.

Perhaps /. shouldn't give more mods to people who spend (or waste) all of their mod points whenever they get them and shouldn't keep giving mods to people who have a history of voting negatively.

Sorry for the off-topic* post but it's really been bothering me lately and I needed to vent.

*If someone is going to mod my post down please at least use the correct mod of off-topic.
Re:If ancient people taught us anything... by Leuf · 2012-07-12 14:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

The article talks about how the pyramids got looted within a generation. So by all means, make your don't dig here notice out of fucking platinum and sapphire. I'm sure no one will want to go looking for those things to steal them. A stone tablet sounds pretty much like the ideal medium, but even that will probably get looted because people are stupid.