Microwires Can Replace The DVD-ROM

neutron_p writes "A former Soviet Union military development finds its use in modern technology and still remains fascinating." The development comes in the form of a flexible microwire, 10 micrometers thick and 10cm long, with a metal body and a glass coating, which the linked article says "can store 10 Gigabytes of information. It is possible thanks to their magnetic properties. Anyway, it's not that easy. Researchers say that the greatest difficulty will be with the reading of information."

so...

[to_kallon]

Microwires Can Replace The DVD-ROM...Researchers say that the greatest difficulty will be with the reading of information.
i can write lots of data but then it's lost??
where do i sign up for this great *new* technology??

Would you trust someone who...

[PornMaster]

thinks that CDs use magnetism to report on new tech?

"The microwires become diminutive substitutes for the CD-ROM, given that information can be stored magnetically on them, as with CDs."

In other words

[b1t r0t]

The development comes in the form of a flexible microwire, 10 micrometers thick and 10cm long

There's already a name for this. It's called tape.

(Tape storage started with metal-wire recorders, but esentially they're the same idea, only it's harder to strangle someone with magtape.)

Re:From TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe there will be 1000 wires???

Re:Bit vs buye

[LurkerXXX]

What about the heading for the paragraph?

10 Gigabytes in 10 cm long

followed later by:

The researchers calculate that a 10 cm long microwire can carry out 10 million divisions or cells and in each one of these a byte can be stored. In order to store the byte, each one of these cells is magnetised in one orientation or the other.

Pardon my math, but isn't 10 million bytes 10 Megabytes, not Gigabytes? Isn't the articles claim of data density off a thousand fold?

Re:Since when did CD's store data MAGNETICALLY?!

[operagost]

I stopped reading when I hit that line. The rest of the information in the article is suspect because of that obvious blunder.

So what you're saying is

[Morphix84]

That you have a 10 cm wire that works like a floppy disk, and has the same capacity, except you can't read from it. You compare the magnetic switch technique to CDs, which are optical, and state that this will replace the DVD, even though the highly inaccurate 10 gig capacity is only marginally better than Dual layer DVDs, and we have HD-DVD and Bluray coming out shortly (i.e. before they figure out how to read the data), which will smoke DVDs anyway. WHY IS THIS POSTED ON SLASHDOT!?

No more than I would trust someone who...

[Anonymous Coward]

thinks a byte can be stored in one bit.

The researchers calculate that a 10 cm long microwire can carry out 10 million divisions or cells and in each one of these a byte can be stored. In order to store the byte, each one of these cells is magnetised in one orientation or the other.

More like 10 Megabits in a 10cm wire, not 10 Gigabytes.

Re:Bit vs buye

[nahaj]

Worse, even if you assume that they mean bytes, 10 million of them don't add up to the claimed 10 Gig capacity. There are a number of problems with this report.

Re:Since when did CD's store data MAGNETICALLY?!

[Lisandro]

Pun aside, you can buy rewriteably CDRs anywhere - they were magneto-optic-based, IIRC. Minidiscs work that way aswell, like a parent poster said.

Re:Heinlein came up with this...

[PostItNote]

Chop a wire and measure it from A to B, read that number in binary, and there is your data

So if the Plank length is the smallest unit of space that we can measure, then how long does a wire need to be to measure a megabyte?

Well, let's do the math - for 1 Meg, we need to have 8 bits/byte * 1e6 bytes/meg * 1 binary digit/bit = 8e6 binary digits required. Well, 8 million binary digits means that your length has to be on the order of 2^8e6 units, so let's make our units plank length and figure out how many meters that is.

2^8000000 plank lengths = (10 ^ log_10(2)^8000000 plank lengths =~ 10 ^ 2408239 plank lengths

Which, in meters, is 1e2408239 plank_lengths * 1.6e-35 meters / plank length = 1.6e2408204 meters

Now how big is 1.6 * 10^2408204 meters?

Well, the answer is VERY BIG. As in, it's a number that has no meaning big. I can't describe it's biggitude. Space is peanuts compared to IT. Much larger than the diameter of the universe. Much larger than anything ever imagined ever. Much larger than everything imagined ever all put together.

Heilein's ideas were definitely stuck in a pre-quantum model of the universe. We can't encode one megabyte this way, much less a CD/DVD/Encyclopedia or anything else like that.

(Not a physicist, but I have a deep love of Fermi problems [everything2.com])

Re:Impractical

[GuardianAngus]

If 1Gb = 1e9Gb, 10Gb would be 1e10Gb
Now, for the sake of simplicity, 10cm = 0.1m
0.1m / 1e10Gb = 1e-11 b/m, or 1b = 1e-11 meters.

That puts 1 bit at = 0.000 000 000 01 meters, does it not?
1nm would be = 0.000 000 001
1pm would be = 0.000 000 000 001

Each bit would need to be no more than 10pm (.01nm) for this level of data density. Perhaps my reality has been distorted by too much caffeen. Corrections are welcome.

So how many LoC's per VW would this be?