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Data Storage That Could Outlast the Human Race
Nerval's Lobster writes "Just in case you haven't been keeping up with the latest in five-dimensional digital data storage using femtocell-laser inscription, here's an update: it works. A team of researchers at the University of Southampton have demonstrated a way to record and retrieve as much as 360 terabytes of digital data onto a single disk of quartz glass in a way that can withstand temperatures of up to 1000 C and should keep the data stable and readable for up to a million years. 'It is thrilling to think that we have created the first document which will likely survive the human race,' said Peter Kazansky, professor of physical optoelectronics at the Univ. of Southampton's Optical Research Centre. 'This technology can secure the last evidence of civilization: all we've learnt will not be forgotten.' Leaving aside the question of how many Twitter posts and Facebook updates really need to be preserved longer than the human species, the technology appears to have tremendous potential for low-cost, long-term, high-volume archiving of enormous databanks. The quartz-glass technique relies on lasers pulsing one quadrillion times per second though a modulator that splits each pulse into 256 beams, generating a holographic image that is recorded on self-assembled nanostructures within a disk of fused-quartz glass. The data are stored in a five-dimensional matrix—the size and directional orientation of each nanostructured dot becomes dimensions four and five, in addition to the usual X, Y and Z axes that describe physical location. Files are written in three layers of dots, separated by five micrometers within a disk of quartz glass nicknamed 'Superman memory crystal' by researchers. (Hitachi has also been researching something similar.)"
Dude, did you not read the article?! It's 5D!!!
Archeologists find one of these pieces of quartz, and then (through a lifetime's study) work out that they are not just pretty baubles, but are actually data storage devices. The excitement builds. Whole teams of researchers devote their life to the task of decoding the message - after all, the Rosetta Stone gave a lot of incite into the ancients - and then finally, the day comes when someone has worked it all out:
99 crystals contain cat pictures
1 of them contains the instructions on how to build the reader
And, tucked into one small segment of one of the crystals, almost as an afterthought, the digitised Bodlean Library, and the Library of Congress. Pity that bit was a bit chipped...
"She's furniture with a pulse"
I'm happy with DD (2D?), but prefer C myself.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
The concept of a post-apocalypse tribal society restoring mankinds' knowledge with femtocell lasers is hilarious.
Femtocell Sharks.
"It has not been discovered what these disc-shaped glass objects were intended to symbolize, but it is now believed that they served either as ceremonial ornaments or a crude form of currency."
He does have a 5 Digit id.
Fucking A! (or is that illegal these days)
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Apparently if you chip out a small square of quartz from the top edge, you can flip the disk over and store another 360 Terrabytes on the other side. The manaufacturers don't want you knowing this, of course, as they want to sell 720 TB stroage at a premium price.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
came to the conclusion that permanence doesn't exist in the world. [...] informed Western and Eastern thought to this very day
Yeah, no permanence there.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
This is Slashdot. Please trim the redundant branches from your joke code in future to aid readability:
meme = find_matching_meme(post)
if (meme && meme.category == funny_meme)
return funny
else
return not_funny
which is totally what she said
But some of us would be happy if the now often unreadable magnetic records from 70 years ago would have been stored on something more durable.
Because those TPS reports will make great reading?