Slashdot Log In
Nanotech Memory Could Hold Data For 1 Billion Years
Posted by
timothy
on Tue May 26, 2009 09:20 AM
from the is-data-data-when-no-one's-left-to-read-it? dept.
from the is-data-data-when-no-one's-left-to-read-it? dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Digital storage devices have become ubiquitous in our lives but the move to digital storage has raised concerns about the lifetime of the storage media. Now Alex Zettl and his group at the University of California, Berkeley report that they have developed an experimental memory device consisting of a crystalline iron nanoparticle enclosed in a multiwalled carbon nanotube that could have a storage capacity as high as 1 terabyte per square inch and temperature-stability in excess of one billion years. The nanoparticle can be moved through the nanotube by applying a low voltage, writing the device to a binary state represented by the position of the nanoparticle. The state of the device can then be subsequently read by a simple resistance measurement while reversing the nanoparticle's motion allows a memory 'bit' to be rewritten. This creates a programmable memory system that, like a silicon chip, can record digital information and play it back using conventional computer hardware storing data at a high density with a very long lifetime. Details of the process are available at the American Chemical Society for $30."
Related Stories
[+]
Technology: Nano Origami for DNA, Complete With Software 32 comments
wisebabo writes "Some researchers at Technische Universitaet Muenchen and Harvard have developed a way to make DNA 'Origami' fold up into all sorts of desired nanoscale shapes. While this has been done before, there now seems to be a much greater assortment of shapes they can create. What's particularly interesting is that they've developed some software that can be used (presumably with a DNA assembler) that will create what you want; think of CAD/CAM on a molecular scale! 'The toolbox they have developed includes a graphical software program that helps to translate specific design concepts into the DNA programming required to realize them. Three-dimensional shapes are produced by "tuning" the number, arrangement, and lengths of helices.'"
[+]
Science: Scientists Deliver Bee Toxin To Tumors Via "Nanobees" 98 comments
ScienceDaily is reporting that Washington University School of Medicine researchers have found a way to deliver bee toxin to tumors using nano-spheres they call "nanobees." The results in mice showed a cessation of growth or even shrinkage of tumors while the surrounding tissue was protected from the toxin. "The core of the nanobees is composed of perfluorocarbon, an inert compound used in artificial blood. The research group developed perfluorocarbon nanoparticles several years ago and have been studying their use in various medical applications, including diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis and cancer. About six millionths of an inch in diameter, the nanoparticles are large enough to carry thousands of active compounds, yet small enough to pass readily through the bloodstream and to attach to cell membranes."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
If you don't misplace it.. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you don't misplace it..
A billion years? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's great. Will the readers and systems able to display such information be around for even a hundred? Will they even accept the same power?
Re:A billion years? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You could store instructions for accessing the data right in the device! Then you'd be sure there's a durable copy available.
Re:A billion years? (Score:5, Insightful)
The papyrus medium developed by the Egyptians are still readable today
Only if they were stored under conditions conducive to them not rotting away which was the fate of most papyrus.
compared to DVD-RWs that can hold a few GBs of data, but only has a shelf life of a few years.
Stop buying cheap DVD-RWs and you don't have that problem.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you have experience with a brand that lasts for a lot longer I'd really appreciate to hear about it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How are you storing these CD's? I have 10 year old disks that read just fine.
Note: I don't write on the back of the disk which helps them last longer.
May... Meet Will. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, you could play it like that. But will you be able to match the right speed? How about the sound volume? And like you said - scratching problem.
We MAY not be able to read those messages.
Most people WILL not be able to read them pretty soon due to obscurity.
As you've implied - many kids today don't know they can play a record without electricity.
Heck, a dedicated tinkerer could relatively easily make a magnetic tape player from scratch.
Not so likely with CDs. Nearly impossible with DVDs.
The point of the
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We MAY not be able to read those messages.
Most people WILL not be able to read them pretty soon due to obscurity.
Obscurity is not a problem for any sufficiently advanced civilization.
Its not like the records on Voyager were meant for your teen-ager to play on your old dusted off turntable from the attic.
The point made by the GP is that it is easily readable by any society likely to recover Voyager (unless it crash lands on Planet of the Apes).
Yes, they might initially mistake it for a Religious symbol, or random etching by a long gone microbe, or dismiss it all together because its JUST a physical object and the physi
Re:Ken. Meet Barbie. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Main problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The main problem isn't the length of time that data can be stored. Hard drives and tape drives still carry data from the 1970s, but no one can use them. Why? Because of format changes. We recently transitioned to Blu-Ray, and there are countless codecs for video at this point in time. I don't think the problem is with the length of time for storage, as useful as that is, but rather with the format in which we store them.
An excellent anecdote was mentioned on slashdot recently: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/13/005224 [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)
That's why we should store info on something more permanent.....like CASSETTE TAPES.
Wait....oh never mind.
Re:Main problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Main problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Hard drives and tape drives still carry data from the 1970s
Interesting side note to this. My sister's computer recently wouldn't work. She brought it to a computer tech to be fixed. (I wouldn't fix it for two big reasons. 1) They live too far away and 2) I've fixed it in the past only to have them disable the protections I put in place - firewall, antivirus, etc - because they were "too annoying.") As my sister was telling me of what the tech said he needed to do, I stopped her on one important point. He was insisting on replacing the hard drive because "they only work for 3-5 years so this one's likely to die any day now." I told her that I had hard drives work for 8 or more years and there's no reason (short of abuse) why a hard drive shouldn't last over a decade. Whether the drive's space limits will make it useful past 10 years is another question entirely, but it should still be usable. I advised her that the tech was just trying to sell her stuff that she didn't need. Of course, during my next phone call to her, I won't be surprised to hear how she replaced the hard drive because it was 5 years old and going to die soon.
Parent
Re:Main problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Unsolicited advice: If you aren't going to do the work, don't second guess the tech doing the work. Likely you are right. However, say something does go wrong with the drive... now you are the one who takes the blame. Best to go "uh huh... yea... sounds good" and leave it like that.
Parent
Re:Main problem (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing is, those drives were never abused, never hurt in any way, they just simply died because they were about 5 years old. Clicking noises. Crashy computer. Bad sectors. Death.
What I'm trying to say is that yes, storage itself should work almost indefinitely on a hard drive, but if wear&tear occurs on the bearings or the arm the drive WILL kill itself and most commercial hard drives simply aren't made to last more than about five years of regular use.
Parent
Re:Main problem (Score:5, Interesting)
A few years ago I had four hard drives fail within two weeks of each other resulting in near complete data loss. Luckily I went and bought a big HDD right after the first died so I saved something like 30% of the data because I had somewhere to put it ... but anyway
The thing is, those drives were never abused, never hurt in any way, they just simply died because they were about 5 years old. Clicking noises. Crashy computer. Bad sectors. Death.
That, to me, sounds like they were killed by an environmental factor, just not one you were aware of. It could be anything, but I'll name a few: Humidity, excessive vibration, excessive read/write cycling, excessive power up/down of motor, poor power supply, excessive heat, static electricity, or a physical abuse by somebody else. Assuming these were your only 4 drives (based on your claim of 'near complete data loss'), it's highly unlikely that all 4 drives would die at the same time due to regular wear-and-tear.
Parent
Sure it can (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, what a claim. And by the time someone figures out it's bullshit, the guy who made it will be dust long ago.
BRILLIANT!
Re:Sure it can (Score:4, Funny)
Wow, what a claim. And by the time someone figures out it's bullshit, the guy who made it will be dust long ago.
Bah! I already have a medium that can store data for a billion years [uncp.edu]. Now you kids can take your newfangled nanotech memory and get off of my lawn!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Only if it is stored properly. There are plenty of other inscriptions on other stone tablets that are lost to us due to erosion.
Re:Sure it can (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Sure it can (Score:5, Interesting)
More interesting: now that we know how to make these, we might find these already on our planet (left by a super intelligent species who abandoned our planet a billion years ago :-)
Parent
Finally an archival format we can use. (Score:5, Funny)
The problem with CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, tapes, and so on is that they have extremely short lifetimes (6 to 3 years for most optical media, 10-20 years for most magnetic media).
This is a solution that would finally allow our civilization's information to last beyond the apocalypse occurring in 2012.
Or think think how long Atlantis was lost to intelligent life...
Re:Finally an archival format we can use. (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with CD-Rs, DVD-Rs, tapes, and so on is that they have extremely short lifetimes (6 to 3 years for most optical media, 10-20 years for most magnetic media).
I call Horseshit.
Yes, some of them die early, but I have CD's from 10 years ago that are fine. I took a stroll down memory lane this weekend and looked at some old CD's I had, so i have direct experience as of yesterday. Some commercial CD's of games (Critical Path circa 1994..wow, what a stinker) I just looked at yesterday are fine. Kirk's Comm disk from 1994....no problem at all.
I also have casette tapes from the 70's and 80's that are fine.
VHS videos from the early 80's, disk drives from early 90's....and with a few exceptions, most are totally servicable.
I would say that most will live longer than your claims, yet maybe 10% to 20% will not, instea
Parent
Re:Finally an archival format we can use. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, some of them die early, but I have CD's from 10 years ago that are fine
Maybe, but that's not what's important is it... What matters is if you record something, after how long are you guaranteed to still be able to read the data. With CD-rs I'd put that as low as 1 and a half years.
Notably, you also seem to confuse CDs and CD-rs, the dies used in CD-rs go south far far faster than the data layers used on comercial CDs.
Finally, your cassette tapes from the 70s may be "fine" in terms of listening to them, but how many scratches, pops, whirs and whistles have they picked up? If that were digital data, do you honestly think you'd be able to recover it still?
Parent
It's not a format, it's a medium. (Score:2, Funny)
Sheesh.
Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, no, these places -help- to spread the word by removing roadblocks to scientific research. /sarcasm
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously? We're just abandoning any pretense that these are news summaries now and just outright turning them into ads for products? We're now outright trying to sell things? Weak. Very weak indeed.
Yeah and when the summary notes that a NYT link requires registration, they're trying to get you to register at NYT. Or was that warn you? I guess you could view it either way...
There are two links to free articles with the usual amount of information and details that we get in any tech-related article on Slas
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wonderful, lucky you. And for everyone that *doesn't* have a subscription, the article is about as much benefit as a game of Punch the Monkey.
I'm with the GP, if it's a paid article, it has no place being linked / discussed on a "free" website.
In 1 billion years... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Trust me, if you store your Porn collection, some geek in the future will move heaven and earth to get a peek.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes they will.
In a billion years, there will be a galactic war between the Church of the Holy Goatse, and Two Gods one Cup.
Unfred called it (Score:3, Interesting)
I knew this had the ring of truth about it
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13855395/Weaseljumper-Read-Me-First/ [scribd.com]
Pay-per-view science (Score:3, Insightful)
"Details of the process are available at the American Chemical Society for $30."
Does anyone else find the trend of pay-per-view science disturbing?
All too often, if you search the internet for a topic with ongoing research, you may likely find links to papers with restricted access and not generally accessible.
Any you should assume that several patents are pending based on this ongoing research, even if the idea is a seemingly obvious application of the research.
In software, it is worse. Papers are rarely written, as there are rarely any new ideas. Most all software companies reinvent the same wheels, then attempt to patent cosmetic qualities of the wheeels. Then other companies apply effort to avoid use of such cosmetic patents. and create their own similar cosmetic features (and patents).
Fabtastic! (Score:2)
So now the intelligent cockroaches of the far future can read our Twitters[tm]! That's stupendilicious! LOL! BRB! :-)
Or Slashdot posts! Hey, bugs! How ya doing!
So? (Score:5, Funny)
Nanotech - 1 Billion years
Elephant - Forever
Technology simply cannot compete with mother nature.
Screw that... (Score:4, Funny)
Build nano-elephants.
That way we will be combining nano-technology and nature and we will have a device that stores data for billion forevers.
Parent
One billion years... (Score:4, Funny)
Is our stuff that important? (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess the question is, is the data of today's living really that important? I mean, sure, you might wish you had every bit of minute info from the builders of the pyramids, but, does it really undermine our life to not have it? Indeed, can the imagination and argument required to envision how the past was actually make the past more relevant to us today?
I almost wonder if, instead of having data that lasts forever, if we should have data that deletes itself when you die.
Hasn't this been done before? (Score:4, Funny)
I think there is prior art [slashdot.org] on this one:
Re: (Score:2)
Well, how were they stored? Did someone use them as a coaster?
The 5.25 were the true floppy as in flexible and easily bent.
And are you sure the drive is aligned properly (i.e. it can read the other data on the disk).
I have an old 1993 Zeos 486 that I may fire back up and see if I can read my DOS disks.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Zettl [wikipedia.org] is a pretty well known figure in this field. He's not throwing around the term because it's a buzzword.
Re:Nano this, carbon nano that... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Nano this, carbon nano that... (Score:4, Insightful)
It reminds me of the word "ubiquitous". Prior to 1997 or so no one had ever heard of this word, much less used it in a computer/business setting. Now I see even my boss, someone who does not come from an IT background, using it.
No offense, but is English not your first language? Because that word has been in use for nearly 200 years, and therefore was not originally IT-specific.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, Mork from Ork was using it in the mid 70's ("Nano Nano").
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Lots of work? Normal weathering will destroy stone carvings, and many ancient carvings are either lost completely or so faded as to be unreadable simply because they were left out in the weather for a few thousand years. The well-preserved ones are the ones that were kept in big vaults like the pyramids and protected from the weather. Also, lots and lots of stone carvings have been deliberately destroyed throughout history for various reasons, including times when invading armies tried to destroy the rel
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You know I am sick of people saying the Egyptians had us beat. Sure the data was there but they didn't leave any way to read the data. A lucky find hundreds of miles away called the rosetta stone is what allowed us to crack their encryptian.
Format matters little if you don't leave a method of retrivial. I have tons of programs written back in the early 80's. However since they are all for a TI 99/4a on 5 1/2" floppies I can't use them anymore.
Re:Ah, the psychics are here again (Score:4, Insightful)
What kind of skill is required to see a billion years into the future?
Umm... how about the skill of science?
Okay, to be fair, the summary exaggerates the claim from the scientific paper quite a bit. The summary implies that they are claiming to have built a device that will last for a billion years. Not so. They are claiming that the individual bits should be stable to random thermal flipping over that timescale. Whether or not a device can be built around those bits that also last a billion years is another question. In the words of the authors:
Again, they are not claiming that they have built a device that will last a billion years. But they are saying that they have at least achieved the first step for archival storage. If you want a device that will last for, say, a thousand years, then having bits that persist over at least that long is required. Of course, there are gotchas:
-A real device may have other weak points that degrade first.
-The analysis only considers some dangers of long-term storage. E.g. electric or magnetic fields could cause the bits to flip. Elevated temperatures would reduce the stability time.
-Many memory devices would in principle be stable over very long timescales if analyzed similarly. E.g. for a normal hard drive, at room temperature without any electric or magnetic fields, the actual magnetic domain orientation is also stable over very long times.
Point being, the authors of the paper are correct in what they wrote (it's not hard to calculate the kinds of things they were considering, even over timescales of billions of years), but as they point out that's not the whole story for a real device.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Just the single bit isn't stable for a billion years. It's merely theorhetically stable from a single influence for a calculated billion years. That's pure bullshit.
If you're saying that there is always room for us to discover new effects and revise our calculations, then I agree. But if you're saying that we cannot make any kind of predictions, with useful error bars, about events over long timescale, then I have to disagree.
Rocks used to be stable -- until general weathering was observed. And it wasn't observed on the first day.
That's a good example. Apparently you accept the general theories of erosion and weathering, even though we have not measured them over the timescales we think they operate. It wasn't observed on the first day, but we also have not watched a mount