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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)

#211

Post by kragen »

notacoward wrote: post #188
Robotbeat wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or what if it's a niche technology that works just fine at scale in the real world but nobody cares enough for super long lifetimes to pay the higher price for the equipment? No "bad history of claims," just niche technology. Not everything has to be "fake news" or "phony" just because it doesn't take over the world. I can't help but think we're cheapening the idea of fraud when we accuse every company or technology…

I think you're overreacting, or perhaps going off on a bit of a tangent from what I actually said. I didn't accuse anyone of fraud. I even offered kudos. I'm just trying to adjust expectations because the history is indeed bad even if nobody did any wrong. Would it have been better if I'd said "sad" or "unfortunate" instead? A medium that really has these kinds of density and survivability traits is indeed a great th…

If you don't launch it into space, it will be destroyed when the sun engulfs the earth in only six billion years, if not earlier. There's a dismayingly large chance that the only thing surviving from our entire culture in only a few million years will be a mass extinction in the fossil record, a halo of geosynchronous metal debris, and whatever data is encoded in such stable forms as these glass discs.

In that context, describing it as "a publicity stunt" seems short-sighted to the point of self-parody, like a small child who thinks that the main distinguishing feature of money is that you can buy candy with it. In a very short time, it is likely that the only things humanity has done that are even detectable are the launching of satellites, a mass extinction, and the launching of such archival media.

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

#212

Post by kragen »

orbital-decay wrote: post #54
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…

Yeah, actual museum-grade archival is so much more than just having an aging-resistant media. You also need to be able to read and decode it many years into the future, which is really tricky to guarantee - you can't assume the future generations will know how to make a reading device and remember your formats/encodings. So it's a bit like unzip.zip problem.

By a delightful coincidence, there's another article on the front page of HN today that is relevant to the interpretability problem you're alluding to; see the discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20264848

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

#213

Post by gnode »

bastawhiz wrote: post #128

These articles pop up every few years, and it always makes me shake my head. Such storage solves no market need. Technology hardly lasts five years let alone fifty years let alone five billion years. Virtually nobody is worried about being able to read their media 500 years out. And even if that was a reason to pursue a technology, the actual storage capacity is meaningless on its own. 360TB of spinning disks isn't v…

Being able to store data densely on a commodity material such as quartz is great for archival storage (e.g. Amazon Glacier). If the storage media is cheap, then it tends not to matter if it can be reused.

For random access, rapidly created and destroyed data, SSD and HDDs will continue to dominate. But for the growing use case of hoarding data forever, this is a good fit.

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

#214

Post by Robotbeat »

notacoward wrote: post #188
Robotbeat wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or what if it's a niche technology that works just fine at scale in the real world but nobody cares enough for super long lifetimes to pay the higher price for the equipment? No "bad history of claims," just niche technology. Not everything has to be "fake news" or "phony" just because it doesn't take over the world. I can't help but think we're cheapening the idea of fraud when we accuse every company or technology…

I think you're overreacting, or perhaps going off on a bit of a tangent from what I actually said. I didn't accuse anyone of fraud. I even offered kudos. I'm just trying to adjust expectations because the history is indeed bad even if nobody did any wrong. Would it have been better if I'd said "sad" or "unfortunate" instead? A medium that really has these kinds of density and survivability traits is indeed a great th…

It wasn't a publicity stunt by the University. Preserving knowledge over extreme periods of time is the whole point of the Arch organization (which is not for profit). It's weird, maybe not practical, but it's the whole point.

Also, such rockets often just use a mass simulator (i.e. block of concrete or metal) on inaugural flights, so there's nothing wrong with giving it a shot.

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

#216

Post by kragen »

SoylentOrange wrote: post #100

I have a question for anyone here who understands how this works: is the glass from the article resilient to physical shocks like falling/shaking/heat/other mechanical stress? Documents that are meant to last a long time used to be written on vellum because it is a very physically durable material. I understand that this glass method beats existing digital storage methods for resilience, but does it best traditional…

Yes, fused quartz has roughly the mechanical durability of granite, and it doesn't melt until a considerably higher temperature than ordinary glass (though lower than the 1650° temperature at which crystalline quartz melts).

Vellum and other leathers have a lifespan of under 10000 years under ideal conditions, like those under which Ötzi was preserved. Under such conditions, the researchers extrapolate from accelerated-aging measurements that their medium will last 3×10²⁰ years, which is 3×10¹⁴ times as long. That is, this glass disc will last 300,000,000,000,000 times as long as a vellum document will, unless it's subjected to high heat.

They also extrapolate that at 462 K (189°, or, in obsolete units, 372°F) it will last the current age of the universe, some 10–100 billion years. At 189° I think vellum's lifetime is a few minutes.

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

#217

Post by kragen »

bastawhiz wrote: post #128

These articles pop up every few years, and it always makes me shake my head. Such storage solves no market need. Technology hardly lasts five years let alone fifty years let alone five billion years. Virtually nobody is worried about being able to read their media 500 years out. And even if that was a reason to pursue a technology, the actual storage capacity is meaningless on its own. 360TB of spinning disks isn't v…

Virtually nobody is worried about being able to read their media 500 years out.

While this is true, the lesson I draw from this is the opposite from what you seem to be concluding. I conclude that most people are self-obsessed idiots who waste their lives on meaningless and futile things like "market need" and "survival".

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

#218

Post by kragen »

simonh wrote: post #30
fredsted wrote: post #2

What happens at 13.9B years?

I'm guessing that's the estimated time it would take for entropy in the material to render the data unreadable. They specify at room temperature, so I'm pretty sure they're talking about entropic disruption of the structure due to thermal effects. Note that 'glass' is a hugely varied class of materials, so without knowing much more we can't make spot judgements about the validity of the claim.

No, 10–100 billion years is at 462 K, which is a lot hotter than room temperature. At room temperature the estimated lifespan (or, really, the time constant τ) is 3×10²⁰ years.

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

#219

Post by kragen »

RenRav wrote: post #168

How does glass being amorphous affect the data integrity? What 'glass' specifically is being used?

Presumably the amorphous nature of glass lowers the energy barrier to disrupting the stored information. They're using fused quartz glass, as one does.

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

#220

Post by notacoward »

kragen wrote: post #211
notacoward wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're overreacting, or perhaps going off on a bit of a tangent from what I actually said. I didn't accuse anyone of fraud. I even offered kudos. I'm just trying to adjust expectations because the history is indeed bad even if nobody did any wrong. Would it have been better if I'd said "sad" or "unfortunate" instead? A medium that really has these kinds of density and survivability traits is indeed a great th…

If you don't launch it into space, it will be destroyed when the sun engulfs the earth in only six billion years, if not earlier. There's a dismayingly large chance that the only thing surviving from our entire culture in only a few million years will be a mass extinction in the fossil record, a halo of geosynchronous metal debris, and whatever data is encoded in such stable forms as these glass discs. In that contex…

I know it's fun to call people short-sighted and compare them to children, but grow up yourself. Sending something in this particular medium was a publicity stunt, and it worked. You think we're talking about it here for any other reason than Elon Musk was (tangentially) involved? Sending some sort of beacon or memorial into space is such a great idea we've done it many times before, with better-tested media. If we wanted to try something newer, a Rosetta Project disk would have been a much more obvious choice.

Practicality wasn't the point. Publicity was.

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