Really cool science

[sironin]

“We’ve developed a new mechanism for digital memory storage that consists of a crystalline iron nanoparticle shuttle enclosed within the hollow of a multiwalled carbon nanotube,” said physicist Alex Zettl who led this research.

“Through this combination of nanomaterials and interactions, we’ve created a memory device that features both ultra-high density and ultra-long lifetimes, and that can be written to and read from using the conventional voltages already available in digital electronics.” (http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2009/06/03/billion-year-ultra-dense-memory-chip/)

Basically, the gist of it is that they've made a new type of memory that can hold a ton more information in the same amount of space, and it'll still be readable for more than a billion years.

You can read the entire scientific paper here:
http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/pdf/361.NanoLet.9-Begtrup.pdf

NEMDs (Nano-ElectroMechanical Devices) are going to be pretty cool.

[StoneScratcher]

Basically, the gist of it is that they've made a new type of memory that can hold a ton more information in the same amount of space, and it'll still be readable for more than a billion years.

You can read the entire scientific paper here:
http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/pdf/361.NanoLet.9-Begtrup.pdf

NEMDs (Nano-ElectroMechanical Devices) are going to be pretty cool.

Awesome! The thing is though, this has to be maintained at room temperature. The Karnak Temple at Luxor and the Domesday Book would still survive if there were an Ice Age. If there were ever a "global annihilation" of some sort, more than likely, some large stone structures, such as in Egypt, would survive in some recognizable form.

How can this be maintained for a billion years at room temperature without an consistent energy source that will maintain it? Maybe I missed it in the article.

Thanks for posting this information, it is interesting.

[LouC]

[/URL]

Basically, the gist of it is that they've made a new type of memory that can hold a ton more information in the same amount of space, and it'll still be readable for more than a billion years.

You can read the entire scientific paper here:
[url]http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/pdf/361.NanoLet.9-Begtrup.pdf (http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2009/06/03/billion-year-ultra-dense-memory-chip/)

NEMDs (Nano-ElectroMechanical Devices) are going to be pretty cool.

Although truly archival storage is a global property of an entire memory system, the first inescapable requirement for such a system is that the underlying mechanism of information storage for individual bits must exhibit a persistence time much longer than the envisioned lifetime of the resulting device.

A single bit lifetime in excess of a billion years demonstrates that this system has the potential to store information stably for any practical desired archival time scale.

Thus, nanoscale electromechanical memory devices such as those described here present a new solution to ultrahigh density, archival data storage.

Of course the above highlighted paragraph is the money shot of the article.

The "potential" for billion year data storage would not of course be the selling point of this technology, who thinks anyone here now will be here in a billion years still using this archive, no one.

Companies, or private individuals, thinking about long term archival storage I imagine are thinking somewhere between now and maybe up to a hundred years.

Much data is only archived for the length of time that there may be any tax liability associated with the data.

There are across the world several locations that provide stable temperature storage that do not require a constant power supply other than for the operation of lighting and lifts and ancillary equipment.

Some are in abandoned mines, some in utilized caves.

Of course they would be subject to eventual geographical infirmities but there is plenty of reason to believe they would be more than adequate for secure storage of archived data for far longer than mankind today would need.

[curtis123]

[/URL]

Basically, the gist of it is that they've made a new type of memory that can hold a ton more information in the same amount of space, and it'll still be readable for more than a billion years.

You can read the entire scientific paper here:
[url]http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/pdf/361.NanoLet.9-Begtrup.pdf (http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2009/06/03/billion-year-ultra-dense-memory-chip/)

NEMDs (Nano-ElectroMechanical Devices) are going to be pretty cool.

Oh, good. I was worried about the 500-million year shelf life of porn collections

[LouC]

Oh, good. I was worried about the 500-million year shelf life of porn collections

:))

Nearly a billion years from now a space fairing civilization happens upon the third planet from the sun in a solar system they are exploring, they don't find any intelligent life on the surface but do run across caves down below and a cache of archived Midget Brazilian Porn...

:rolleyes:

[sironin]

Awesome! The thing is though, this has to be maintained at room temperature. The Karnak Temple at Luxor and the Domesday Book would still survive if there were an Ice Age. If there were ever a "global annihilation" of some sort, more than likely, some large stone structures, such as in Egypt, would survive in some recognizable form.

How can this be maintained for a billion years at room temperature without an consistent energy source that will maintain it? Maybe I missed it in the article.

Thanks for posting this information, it is interesting.

It only has to be maintained at room temperature if you want it to last more than a billion years. Considering its mechanical nature, it could probably survive just fine at much higher or lower temperatures.

[sironin]

Of course the above highlighted paragraph is the money shot of the article.

The "potential" for billion year data storage would not of course be the selling point of this technology, who thinks anyone here now will be here in a billion years still using this archive, no one.

Companies, or private individuals, thinking about long term archival storage I imagine are thinking somewhere between now and maybe up to a hundred years.

Much data is only archived for the length of time that there may be any tax liability associated with the data.

There are across the world several locations that provide stable temperature storage that do not require a constant power supply other than for the operation of lighting and lifts and ancillary equipment.

Some are in abandoned mines, some in utilized caves.

Of course they would be subject to eventual geographical infirmities but there is plenty of reason to believe they would be more than adequate for secure storage of archived data for far longer than mankind today would need.

One of my early jobs was digitally processing over a hundred years' worth of life insurance records. You can get life insurance as an infant and keep it until 120 if you live that long. And this was a good decade ago. So there's certainly a market for reliable data storage systems. It is hard to beat the claim of over a billion years. ;)

But you're right. The density of the storage will be a more marketable selling point. It has over 10 times the density of anything we have today. It would be pretty awesome to have an 160gb usb stick.

[Samm]

[/URL]

Basically, the gist of it is that they've made a new type of memory that can hold a ton more information in the same amount of space, and it'll still be readable for more than a billion years.

You can read the entire scientific paper here:
[url]http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/pdf/361.NanoLet.9-Begtrup.pdf (http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2009/06/03/billion-year-ultra-dense-memory-chip/)

NEMDs (Nano-ElectroMechanical Devices) are going to be pretty cool.
Yes; that is cool... but to suggest integrity of the data for a billion years is just silly. They cannot predict the survivability of the nanotube... or the spot where the nanotube is stored... for a billion years. Besides... man won't be here anywhere nearly that long anyway, so why even toss out such an unsupportable claim?

Besides... even if some beings a billion years from now finds the nanotubes intact... they won't be able to play them. They will be the technological equivalent of an 8-track. ;)

[ISYairio]

A billion years from now... that thing is the equivalent of an 8-track?

Come on now... that sounds like a crazy understatement to me... :razz:

[StoneScratcher]

It only has to be maintained at room temperature if you want it to last more than a billion years. Considering its mechanical nature, it could probably survive just fine at much higher or lower temperatures.

If man could find a way to store it in themselves and pass it on to the the next generation, then it would be maintained at an approximate constant of 98.6 degrees.

If some major cosmic event can be foretold, send them (the civilization's "chosen") up into the space station.

[AeroEngineer]

Not as cool as write only memory:

http://icl486.pointclark.net/~pdf/25120_WOM.pdf

[Samm]

Not as cool as write only memory:


You mean like this?
http://www.fi.edu/learn/tut/images/tut_rosetta.jpg

[sironin]

http://gizmodo.com/5288296/the-worlds-tiniest-vga-display-uses-pixels-the-size-of-cells

Low power consumption AND packing more pixels into a smaller space? Yes please!