Nanotech Memory Could Hold Data For 1 Billion Years 239
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."
Re:Nano this, carbon nano that... (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: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?
Re:Meh, Good start... (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.
ubiquitous (Score:2, Informative)
Actually Bell Telephone popularized the term "ubiquitous" in a series of nationwide print advertisements in the mid-1960's [flickr.com].
Re:Some one please pay the 30 bucks (Score:1, Informative)
Full article is available at the University of California, Berkeley website in pdf format [berkeley.edu].
Re:A billion years? (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:May... Meet Will. (Score:2, Informative)
Last time I did it the volume from a needle through a piece of paper was sufficient to hear the sound clearly. However, I did cheat and use a turntable to spin the record. I think if you've gone as far as laying a needle to the track, you're expecting to make a sound, so you'll adjust the speed until it sounds reasonable.
Ooo...Just paper:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRMDaOBxUXk [youtube.com]
No electricity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPWyTBUYolo [youtube.com]
Given the time frame you suggested, it seems highly unlikely that we wouldn't be able to play records. I think it would require a catastrophic failure of civilization. Otherwise, in 100 years there would still be people who knew people who played records and told them how they worked. You'll still be able to see the equipment. People own phonographs that are already 100 years old. I doubt we'll lose them all in the next 100 years.
Now, if you find an ipod 100 years from now...good luck with that.
Re:May... Meet Will. (Score:1, Informative)
Well, you can't scratch if you use laser to measure the depressions on the disk (the current "obvious" way of measuring things like that). The GP used the needle to show how simple it is, but a more advanced society will be able to use complex tools.
Also, rotation speed is obvious once you know it is sound, you just calculate the FFT of your data and you'll see how it ends abruptly near a certain distance. That distance is 22kHz, so, adjust rotation accordingly. Even the fact that it is sound is probably easy to discover, since what is pressed at the disk is a smmoth wave. It is certanly not digital, and has 2 channels.
The only non-obvious thing about a LP that I can see is that there is some information in it. Everything else comes naturaly once you know humans.