Hitachi's New Quartz Plate - Store Data for 100+ Million Years

Data That Lives Forever - Japan's Hitachi

The company on Monday unveiled a method of storing digital information on slivers of quartz glass that can endure extreme temperatures and hostile conditions without degrading, almost forever.

Hitachi's new technology stores data in binary form by creating dots inside a thin sheet of quartz glass, which can be read with an ordinary optical microscope. Provided a computer with the know-how to understand that binary is available—simple enough to programme, no matter how advanced computers become—the data will always be readable.

The chip, which is resistant to many chemicals and unaffected by radio waves, can be exposed directly to high temperature flames and heated to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 Fahrenheit) for at least two hours without being damaged. It is also waterproof, meaning it could survive natural calamities, such as fires and tsunami.

Also some interesting comments.

Thinning the glass down, increasing the number of layers and making the dots smaller and more tightly spaced will easily multiply that number to around half a terabyte.


If it comes down to information density, holographic encoding by the spatial distribution of the dots could be used to store an enormous volume of information in the glass chip, which can be revealed by shining coherent light at some selected wavelength at the glass, at different angles.

Could place one of these inside a time capsule; thousands or millions of years down the road our descendants (or something else?) discovers it inside a cave/excavation site. Imagine if we discovered something similar from our ancestors, or even a previous race? The crystal skulls come to mind.

reply to post by Raelsatu


Very interesting !
When the first CD was introduced to the public, I thought, “finally a reliable storage apparatus that can last forever”. Well...so much for 'forever'.
This new Quartz plate gives me hope. It would be a shame to once again lose all that collective gathered knowledge.

reply to post by Raelsatu


I have two words:

CRYSTAL SKULLS

That is all.

reply to post by Raelsatu


Quartz is awesome..

Something about this feels like old technology being rediscovered. Just an odd dejavu feeling, but I'm not talking about those crystal skulls, but something...

Cool.

I cannot believe how different things have gotten in my short life. I remember my mom writing checks to buy me tape cassettes, and VHS tapes... I still say rewind the tape. Or that was a good film, even though it wasn't a film it was a plastic plate haha.

before cordless phones cell phones haha...

Crystal Hard drives...
geez...

next up? computers completely built with light tubes something of an advanced fiberoptic..

Computers in 10 years may look more like a dang light bright but be more powerful than everything we have now combined..

"back in my day we had to carry around cash!"
whats that?
"paper that was used as money cause it has numbers on it."
what the heck is paper?
"oh.. right."
haha

Revelation 15:2

2 "And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire..."

No, I'm not simply throwing in a random bible quote. Perhaps this gets back to the so-called "Book of Life" in which the names and actions of every person who has ever lived is recorded.

Combine that with "The Simulation Argument" and there may be something going on.

Good idea they had there.

They should encode all the knowledge of the human race onto Thousands of these and then bury them in a giant underground library and mark the site with massive impervious stone structures that will last for eons so that mankind can always find this knowledge again in the event of a cataclysm and decode it with ease...

oh wait....

$%^*#

Never mind

reply to post by penninja


We're still waiting for the secret underground chambers beneath the pyramids to be revealed. They just found a previously undisclosed chamber:

Hidden Chamber With Artifacts Found in Great Pyramid
www.abovetopsecret.com...

An approximate 6 X 9 room or chamber lies directly behind the 2nd sealed doors in at least the South shaft. Several small statues were spotted on the video camera but no details on what exactly they represent were able to be seen. A gold or copper chain was spotted in the corner of the chamber Small pottery and stone jars are spread throughout the floor of the chamber In the center of the chamber lies a gold or copper box which is closed and its contents are unknown. The box is roughly the size of a one foot size shoe box. No hieroglyphics or other writing were spotted anywhere in the chamber. Read more: scienceray.com...

Getting back to my last post:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

An Addendum:

Agent Smith: [He and Cypher are eating at a fancy restaurant] Do we have a deal, Mr. Reagan?
Cypher: [Cuts a piece of steak and holds it in front of him] I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After 9 years, you know what I have learned? [Eats the piece of steak and sighs contently] Ignorance is bliss.
Agent Smith: Then we have a deal?
Cypher: I don't wanna remember nothing. Nothing, you understand? And I want to be rich. You know, someone important … like an actor.

- "The Matrix"

reply to post by gravitational


Maybe someday a descendant will find a quartz disc & decode a copy of Hell on Wheels. =p

reply to post by Dustytoad


Yea I know what you mean. I'm 22, but even over the course of a decade I've watched & experienced the evolution of computers/consoles/media; and in some way it feels surreal. As time passes the technological research, breakthroughs, & advances seem to be speeding up. I feel almost privileged to live in this age, yet at the same time afraid -- for what waits for humanity around the corner. Self-destruction, more division, degradation of ethics, extinction even; or an age where humans begin to unify & discard of these boundaries. Interesting times we live in.

reply to post by this_is_who_we_are


Sounds crazy yet plausible. There are so many possibilities as we explore and discover, and experience. I personally think the simulation argument is logical and makes perfect sense when looking at our current path. As for the "book of life", perhaps it really is some sort of compendium of all the lives of every conscious being that existed in a certain universe. In the end the book could be used to "judge" or sort individuals by their actions & thoughts (karma per se), or merge every "glass page" into the original consciousness.

Originally posted by Raelsatu

reply to post by this_is_who_we_are

 

Sounds crazy yet plausible. There are so many possibilities as we explore and discover, and experience. I personally think the simulation argument is logical and makes perfect sense when looking at our current path. As for the "book of life", perhaps it really is some sort of compendium of all the lives of every conscious being that existed in a certain universe. In the end the book could be used to "judge" or sort individuals by their actions & thoughts (karma per se), or merge every "glass page" into the original consciousness.

reply to post by Raelsatu



Puts a whole new spin on "being saved"... or deleted, as it were.

Originally posted by penninja
Good idea they had there.

They should encode all the knowledge of the human race onto Thousands of these and then bury them in a giant underground library and mark the site with massive impervious stone structures that will last for eons so that mankind can always find this knowledge again in the event of a cataclysm and decode it with ease...

oh wait....

$%^*#

Never mind

hahahahha exactly.

the Labrynth is there somewhere.

In the future someone will find that and start a fire with it. Seriously, how self important are we? Starting to sound like Pharaohs. Our knowledge is pppfffttt. Look back now and see all the silly stuff we thought at the time was so important and going to revolutionize blah blah blah.

Either we will be so advanced in the future, all that information stored on there will be a huge source of humor, or we will be so primitive as to not have a clue what it is, let alone have a device to be able to decode it.

It is a good invention for storing records, like Taxes, etc, for the span of a couple of life times, after that...'shrugs'

This is awesome. I wonder when the quarts hard drives will be available.

For many years science fiction has used quarts as storage containers for data. Now science is catching up. Now it's believed the warp drive is possible and experiments have been done to prove faster than light may be real. We have cell phones like unto the Star Trek Communicators. They are even working on a Tricorder.

It has often been said the the best science fiction is rooted in science fact. Now we have science fiction becoming science fact. Could there be a collective consciousness cause and effect happening here that is actually changing our reality , creating new reality out of our fantasies? I believe this can be a sound theory in the quantum world and has been shown to be valid at least at the quantum level.

Who says Dreams can't come true? Apparently, not Science. Kinda makes you want to re-think everything we know about science - and we should.

Originally posted by Iamschist
In the future someone will find that and start a fire with it.

Have you ever tried to burn quartz?

From the OP story:

The chip, which is resistant to many chemicals and unaffected by radio waves, can be exposed directly to high temperature flames and heated to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 Fahrenheit) for at least two hours without being damaged.

Heck even putting it IN a fire apparently would take a while to damage it.

"As you must have experienced, there is the problem that you cannot retrieve information and data you managed to collect," said Torii, apparently referring to now-obsolete record players and cine films.

Actually I've had this problem backing up data to DVDs. I check the DVD right after I burn it, and the data is accessible. Then I try again 2 years later, and depending on the DVD, on occasion it's apparently degraded over those 2 years and sometimes I have some difficulty accessing some of the data. The store-bought DVDs with movies on them are more stable but the kind you burn yourself I don't think last all that long. This is a real problem.

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix
This is awesome. I wonder when the quarts hard drives will be available.

The magnetic data may not be the most unreliable part of modern hard drives... crashes are common, however since the device in the OP can be read optically, the head could be further from the surface and this might avoid head crashes.

We do need some kind of reliable data storage that can last more than a decade or two, whether it's this or something else...and we just don't seem to have it. Even old films degrade with time.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I think he meant using it as magnification and starting a fire with the sun.


This is brilliant so much can be saved.

Reminds me of the crystal skulls...and how they are supposedly records of all the worlds history or something of that nature...

I don't know what kind of crystal the skulls are but I do know quartz is one of the most common types.

very interesting.

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix
This is awesome. I wonder when the quarts hard drives will be available.

Well the question with these quartz drives is whether or not they'll be practical for day-to-day average PC use. I don't think we know what the read/write speeds are, i.e the efficiency by which the data can be accessed/replicated. I'm sure this will be worked out, as technology & research is ramping up consistently. I believe these drives will be especially useful for safely retaining data for long periods of time, compiling an "eternal" library of our entire history, past and future.

However I know there are many different emerging HDD types that could make their way into the market as well; for example IBM's recent publication on atomic-scale magnetic memory, which is potentially 100x denser than current hard-disk, 160x denser than NAND Flash, and over 400x denser than DRAM. There are other potential drives being created/researched that use DNA, bacteria, other crystals; single atom quantum memory, etc. What the future holds we can only imagine, and brace ourselves for.

It has often been said the the best science fiction is rooted in science fact. Now we have science fiction becoming science fact. Could there be a collective consciousness cause and effect happening here that is actually changing our reality , creating new reality out of our fantasies? I believe this can be a sound theory in the quantum world and has been shown to be valid at least at the quantum level.

Who says Dreams can't come true? Apparently, not Science. Kinda makes you want to re-think everything we know about science - and we should.

I know exactly what you mean. It does feel like a lot of the discoveries & technological leaps these days point towards a future that even goes beyond the vision of some science-fiction. Intriguing times. That said, I would like to believe humans could all just come together in peace to move forward into a new age like nothing we've seen; but I'm afraid it's not so simple. There is still much division, bigotry, ignorance, intolerance, greed, hate, & violence being perpetuated throughout the globe. Let's spread the word and help people wake up, imo. =]

I'm not buying it, just look at her eyes, wander aimlessly, would you trust her ?

I heard she later accidentally drop the glass and broke it because its too thin.
There goes Google archive, oh well.

Congrats Hitachi!!! LOL. Can't wait for the gundams

Originally posted by this_is_who_we_are
reply to post by Raelsatu

 

I have two words:

CRYSTAL SKULLS

That is all.

Totally wrong. Why would any technological society (or individual) encode messages in an object that looks like art? You would encode data in a cube or a cuboid of dimensions 1,2,4 or 1,4,9