I remember chatting to someone working on the project at the University of Southampton years ago .. I think it was back in 2004. Great to hear it's come to fruition.
The length of time this type of project takes amazes me.
Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)
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Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)
#12Does anyone know a resource which explains the theoretical limit for retrievable, durable, information storage?
I would assume the most dense medium possible would be a collection of neutrons, since neutron stars are the most dense object other than a black hole, but retrieving information from them doesn’t seem feasible.
Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)
#13Interesting side effect, this also gives us some clue about what kind of ... information storage devices we should be looking for in other heavenly bodies.
Had we found a bunch of silicate glass pebbles in Europa, we'd have considered them a curiosity. After this, we have good reason to find a way to ship it back and have another look.
Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)
#14So it’s like a Craftsman tools warranty.
Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)
#15What happens at 13.9B years?
Most likely the defect rate will reach a specific value so that the storage medium is no longer considered reliable.
Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)
#16Im always sceptical about these claims of archive longevity. IIRC when CD-Rs were first available, they were touted as suitable for century long archives. The reality was far from that.
Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)
#17Given that the sun will die in about 5B Years, this is a bit of a gimmick :-D
Sun will become a red giant in about 5 billion years. Space habitats, and habitats on moons of gas giants will still be possible.
Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)
#18I dunno, but it seems to me universities increasingly focus on press releases and marketing departments...
5D and 13.8 billion years? Phony. I know no sane scientist or enigneer that would say they use more than 3D physics. Sounds like catch phrases to sell. With such logic plain old HDD is at least 4D, because it uses CHS coordinates and magnetic orientation, to store data.
To me such communication style undermines the real scine behind it. Do they have nothing better to brag about than excuses to call invention 5D? Why introduce such noise?
Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)
#19So if one of these discs was dug up by a civilization with the level of technology we had in, say, the 70's, would they be able to tell what it was, much less make something to read it?
Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)
#20Can I rant about the 5D?
"It's been dubbed five-dimensional (5D) digital data because, in addition to the position of the data, the size and orientation are extremely important too"
Orientation is inherently important anyway. Have you ever tried reading a book upside down, and what does size bring? Other than lowering density. And obviously position is important, it's the difference between data and randomness.