Nanotech Memory Could Hold Data For 1 Billion Years

One of the fallacies that you hear often is that "storing data digitally is not good for long-term data storage." The 10 to 100 gigabits of data per square inch on today’s memory cards has an estimated life expectancy of only 10 to 30 years.

Indeed, writing once to today's digital media is not a good long-term solution but that totally ignores the topics of data maintenance and data replication. Whatever the process, many people still believe that the only media that is suitable for long-term storage is paper and/or microfilm.

A new technology has been announced that should put an end to such beliefs.

Alex Zettl and his group at the University of California, Berkeley report that they have developed an experimental memory device with a storage capacity as high as 1 terabyte per square inch and the ability to store data in excess of one billion years.

That's right: a billion years. That should be long enough for most genealogy purposes!

The new technology creates a programmable memory system that, like a silicon chip, can record digital information and play it back using today's computer hardware storing data at a high density with a very long lifetime.

You can read more at http://www.physorg.com/news162061022.html.

Comments

[Matt]

"A new technology has been announced that should put an end to such beliefs."

I don't think it puts an end to such beliefs. The other big factor you are leaving out is that human readable mediums will always be a better way to store data than a machine-only readable medium.

Paper and microfilm are not susceptible to an EMP bomb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse) which would wipe out most all electronic data based memory systems :-)

[Dick Eastman]

Well, in the case of EMP, I think we will all have other priorities that will demand our attention first. (sigh)

Paper is only good for 50 to 100 years, unless you use archival quality acid-free paper (which few people do), Then it is good for perhaps 200 years. However, the bigger problem is the ink or toner that is used. Most of today's inks and toners won't last more than 25 or 50 years, regardless of the paper it used on. Again, there is archival quality ink available at high prices but few people use that. I have never heard of archival quality laser toner.

Microfilms will last up to 300 years, if they are not used and are left in climate-controlled storage. However, microfilm EQUIPMENT is becoming difficult to purchase as manufacturers are dropping out. Have you tried to purchase a microfilm camera recently? You can still find second-hand ones in many places but new ones are almost impossible to find. All the major microfilm manufacturers have stopped making them.

The assumption is that you will not be able to purchase microfilm equipment 25 years from now.

- Dick Eastman

[John Ralls]

A bit of a reality check is in order here.
The likelihood of anything being readable a million years from now is infinitesimal. Consider that our ability to read and write is much less than 10 thousand years old, and the oldest material that we can read is only 5000 years old. True, modern paper deteriorates very fast, but there exists paper that will last for a few hundred years if kept dry and dark. The same is true of ink.

But we read the works of Cicero and Caesar, Herodotus and Homer not because we have the media that they originally inscribed but because we have copied it, and copied the copies, over the millennia since they wrote.

True, there are clay tablets from Babylon, Hieroglyphs from Egypt, and stone inscriptions from China all several thousand years old that we (well, a few of us) can read today. But there are many more writings from around the world, many younger than those, which we cannot read because we have lost the language or the characters or both.

As with so much else in modern technology, the process of losing the language and the characters is greatly accelerated. While I can easily read the 18th century documents of my ancestors, I can no longer read the 20 year old 5 1/4" floppy disks that I made myself. I can read a microfilm without a microfilm machine by putting it under a microscope, but that does me no good with those floppy disks.

Who knows what was really meant by those artists of Lascaux a mere 40,000 years ago? We can at least appreciate the artistic value. What will our descendants 40,000 (or even 400) years from now make of the little cube of nano-storage? Will they even recognize it as storage?

--John Ralls

[Dae Powell]

I believe it has tremendous potential. The primary consideration, I would think, is the cost. Can it be brought into the price range of mass consumption such as the USB drives in common use todae?

Happy Dae·
http://ShoeStringGenealogy.com

[Trish Lewis]

The bottom line, which another Commenter pointed out, is that we are arrogant to think ANYTHING will always last. We can only do our best, and then it's up to fate!

[Jim Castellan]

The most important thing is to do something of value that a good number of people think is worth preserving. Then there is a better chance that whatever the technology issues it will be maintained and passed on.

[Stafford Keer]

Come on!
How can they prove this prediction?

[Jason Presley]

Sounds like another 100 year lightbulb.