A Million-Year Hard Disk 394
sciencehabit writes "Pity the builders of nuclear waste repositories. They have to preserve records of what they've buried and where, not for a few years but for tens of thousands of years, perhaps even millions. Trouble is, no current storage medium lasts that long. Today, Patrick Charton of the French nuclear waste management agency ANDRA presented one possible solution to the problem: a sapphire disk inside which information is engraved using platinum. The prototype shown costs €25,000 to make, but Charton says it will survive for a million years. The aim, Charton says, is to provide 'information for future archaeologists.' But, he concedes: 'We have no idea what language to write it in.'"
The Long Now has already looked at this... (Score:5, Informative)
These waste management folks might want to look at the Rosetta Disk project:
http://rosettaproject.org/disk/concept/ [rosettaproject.org]
It's, you know, a disk meant to store information for a very long time.
Also watch this film... (Score:5, Informative)
The scale of the work involved is almost beyond comprehension. And a hard disk is just a fraction of that work.
It will blow your mind.
Re:Etchings? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Etchings? (Score:5, Informative)
Close. Most things that undergo radioactive decay become other radioactive elements and different particles of various energies. You have to look at the whole decay chain to find out where the bad ones are.
Re:easy answer. (Score:5, Informative)
011100110110001101 110010011001010 1110111001000000100 0011001000000111000001110 101011101000010000001101 00101110100001000000 110000101101100011011000010000001 10100101101110001000000110 00100110100101101110011000010111001001111001
"screw C put it all in binary"
I wonder who else bothered to convert this up before me.
Re:If ancient people taught us anything... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:easy answer. (Score:4, Informative)
Holy crap, mods! Am I the only one who RTFA? It's not a CD or computer memory, it's a double layer sapphire disk with silver printing sandwitched in between and needs nothing more complex too read than a simple microscope and knowledge of whatever human language it's written in. The comments about computer languages are JOKES, son (as Mr. Leghorn might say).
It's something to keep future generations whose civilizations have collapsed safe from the poisons we've buried.