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Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

economist.com

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Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#31

Post by restalis »

dexwiz wrote: post #8

From -269ºC to -196ºC is actually a huge improvement. Its the difference between liquid helium (expensive) to liquid nitrogen (cheap). Getting something that cold is hard, but keeping it there is just a matter of insulation. There seems to be a different kind of physics when you get that cold. Stable single atom structures, superconducting magnets, etc. It's all based around the idea that nanometer structures are now…

Atomic level storage does not have to necessarily be brought to the common liquid water temperature range user. There is a lot of massive storage demand from parties that are not necessarily interested to get in touch with the physical storage medium itself. These would benefit right here and now as soon as the technology could be mass-produced.

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#32

Post by guelo »

Sure, maintain your chlorine lattice at -196ºC and then use your handy scanning tunneling microscope to manually move atoms around.

I would say "paving the way to large-scale storage" is extremely generous for what they actually achieved, to the point of being incorrect.

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#33

Post by ISL »

dexwiz wrote: post #8

From -269ºC to -196ºC is actually a huge improvement. Its the difference between liquid helium (expensive) to liquid nitrogen (cheap). Getting something that cold is hard, but keeping it there is just a matter of insulation. There seems to be a different kind of physics when you get that cold. Stable single atom structures, superconducting magnets, etc. It's all based around the idea that nanometer structures are now…

-269 and -196 C understate the achievement.

4K and 77K are the same temperatures in absolute units.

The warmer experiment is twenty times hotter than the colder one.

For comparison in human terms, 20x hotter than room temperature is ~5700 C.

Edit: Mmm. Morning math mistakes. Thanks!

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#34

Post by ch8230 »

guelo wrote: post #32

Sure, maintain your chlorine lattice at -196ºC and then use your handy scanning tunneling microscope to manually move atoms around. I would say "paving the way to large-scale storage" is extremely generous for what they actually achieved, to the point of being incorrect.

Agreed. It doesn't sound like any practical application is ready with this approach.

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#35

Post by dcre »

guelo wrote: post #32

Sure, maintain your chlorine lattice at -196ºC and then use your handy scanning tunneling microscope to manually move atoms around. I would say "paving the way to large-scale storage" is extremely generous for what they actually achieved, to the point of being incorrect.

I cannot imagine what you think "paving the way" is supposed to mean.

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#36

Post by neckro23 »

smellf wrote: post #29

> Dr Otte reports read speeds of 1-2 minutes per block. He reckons he could boost those speeds drastically, to about a megabit per second. That would be a big improvement, but still thousands of times slower than modern hard drives. Try tens of times slower. There would absolutely be applications for nonvolatile memory that reads at 1 Mbps but has this kind of insane memory density. For most applications you'd probab…

Thousands is correct. A magnetic hard disk has a bandwidth of well over 1 Gbps.

Long-term stability (and this would only be any good for long-term storage, at that rate!) is a pretty tall order. Even current storage methods can't really manage it.

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#37

Post by zeristor »

ISL wrote: post #33
dexwiz wrote: post #8

From -269ºC to -196ºC is actually a huge improvement. Its the difference between liquid helium (expensive) to liquid nitrogen (cheap). Getting something that cold is hard, but keeping it there is just a matter of insulation. There seems to be a different kind of physics when you get that cold. Stable single atom structures, superconducting magnets, etc. It's all based around the idea that nanometer structures are now…

-269 and -196 C understate the achievement. 4K and 77K are the same temperatures in absolute units. The warmer experiment is twenty times hotter than the colder one. For comparison in human terms, 20x hotter than room temperature is ~5700 C. Edit: Mmm. Morning math mistakes. Thanks!

Keep to the Kelvin.

20 times room temperature that is 300K is 6000K, as hot as the shining Sun.

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#38

Post by unchocked »

coldcode wrote: post #15
dexwiz wrote: post #8

From -269ºC to -196ºC is actually a huge improvement. Its the difference between liquid helium (expensive) to liquid nitrogen (cheap). Getting something that cold is hard, but keeping it there is just a matter of insulation. There seems to be a different kind of physics when you get that cold. Stable single atom structures, superconducting magnets, etc. It's all based around the idea that nanometer structures are now…

The problem I see is what happens if the temperature doesn't stay in the required range for whatever reason like power failures, earthquakes, sloppy maintenance - you lose the data. Having such an enormous storage that is so fragile seems to have limited usefulness. If they ever get it to room temperature and have it be stabile then it might be more interesting.

Power failures of short/intermediate duration aren't necessarily an issue: liquid N2 makes a great thermal reservoir.

In biology there's a fairly good track record of keeping samples cold (granted, mostly at the relatively balmy -80) for many years, generally without mishap.

And anyhow, storage device failure is already considered inevitable, it's mitigated by replication.

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#39

Post by amelius »

dexwiz wrote: post #8

From -269ºC to -196ºC is actually a huge improvement. Its the difference between liquid helium (expensive) to liquid nitrogen (cheap). Getting something that cold is hard, but keeping it there is just a matter of insulation. There seems to be a different kind of physics when you get that cold. Stable single atom structures, superconducting magnets, etc. It's all based around the idea that nanometer structures are now…

> Instead of moving those technologies into our range, I think could focus on moving our technologies to that range and improving/shrinking containment vessels.

Smartphones with liquid nitrogen cooling? :)

Re: Scientists pave the way for large-scale storage at the atomic level

#40

Post by amelius »

dcre wrote: post #35
guelo wrote: post #32

Sure, maintain your chlorine lattice at -196ºC and then use your handy scanning tunneling microscope to manually move atoms around. I would say "paving the way to large-scale storage" is extremely generous for what they actually achieved, to the point of being incorrect.

I cannot imagine what you think "paving the way" is supposed to mean.

It means there is now a known route to reach a certain destination.
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