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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)

#41

Post by theclaw »

dosshell wrote: post #38
YayamiOmate wrote: post #18

I 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…

Just speculating, but if you can index in 5 dimensions to get your data, should it not be called 5D? data = read_bit(x, y, z, yaw, size) But i agree, i would appreciate more information if they are going to use buzz-words.

That seems more like five degrees of freedom than five dimensions.

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#42

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #22
vmurthy wrote: post #10

Given that the sun will die in about 5B Years, this is a bit of a gimmick :-D

By then we could probably tow Sol over to a comparable system using a Shkadov thruster and jump ship to a new sun.

After one billion years, the speed would be 20 km/s and the displacement 34,000 light-years, a little over a third of the estimated width of the Milky Way galaxy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#43

Post by benj111 »

simonh wrote: post #23
benj111 wrote: post #20

Can 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.

Books only have one orientation, so they're not actually making use of that dimension to encode data. The rest of your points... oh my. None of the dimensions count at all, really? So rant away, but it's nice if the sound and fury at least signifies _something_.

No 2 dimensions are important at least :)

Regarding orientation, are you saying they printed half the book over the first half, but at right angles over the top? Ie you see different data from different orientations?

Ps I've seen old (18th century?) letters where they wrote at 0, 90 and 45 degrees to get more on one page. Postage was charged by the page so it made sense. Newspaper also used to be taxed by the page (in the UK at least) so you had origami like folding of one sheet of paper into a newspaper, not aware of them 'double printing' in this way though. I assume that's why 'broadsheets' were so massive up until relatively recently.

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#44

Post by aerique »

bookofjoe wrote: post #26
Dangeranger wrote: post #12

Does 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.

"'Dragon's Egg' is a 1980 hard science fiction novel by Robert L. Forward. In the story, Dragon's Egg is a neutron star with a surface gravity 67 billion times that of Earth, and inhabited by cheela, intelligent creatures the size of a sesame seed who live, think, and develop a million times faster than humans. Most of the novel, from May to June 2050, chronicles the cheela civilization beginning with its discovery o…

This is one of the few science-fiction books that I still think back on. Good, fun story and hard scifi.

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#45

Post by toyg »

Seems a bit of a waste to dedicate an entire 360TB disc to a single text document like a bible, which is probably just a few KBs... /s

More seriously, they don't talk about reading capabilities (retrieval speed etc). And what if it gets scratched? What is the error tolerance? At that density, a single speck of dust could have dramatic implications...

I hope this reaches industrial viability, because we desperately need a digital format that can approximate the lifespan of simple paper. At the moment we are chained to a maintenance nightmare of periodic hops between formats, with deadly consequences any time we miss a single jump.

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#46

Post by benj111 »

technothrasher wrote: post #31
benj111 wrote: post #20

Can 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.

Yes, I've tried reading a book upside down. Reading speed decreased a bit but the information is the same regardless of orientation.

If orientation truly didn't matter, surely you could read the book whilst it was rapidly changing orientation?

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#48

Post by hyperbovine »

YayamiOmate wrote: post #18

I 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…

> I dunno, but it seems to me universities increasingly focus on press releases and marketing departments...

A byproduct of public disinvestment in higher ed. Nowadays, you've got to show the taxpayers, and donors, where their money goes. Which is not all bad in my opinion.

Re: Glass discs that can store 360TB and remain intact for billions of years (2016)

#49

Post by bshipp »

toyg wrote: post #45

Seems a bit of a waste to dedicate an entire 360TB disc to a single text document like a bible, which is probably just a few KBs... /s More seriously, they don't talk about reading capabilities (retrieval speed etc). And what if it gets scratched? What is the error tolerance? At that density, a single speck of dust could have dramatic implications... I hope this reaches industrial viability, because we desperately ne…

I don't disagree, but it's not really different with spinning rust. the solution would likely be similar: seal it in an enclosure to prevent intrusion of dust, scratches, etc.
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