New Memory Material May Hold Data For One Billion Years

[joshcryer]

Scientists are reporting an advance toward remedying this situation with a new computer memory device that can store thousands of times more data than conventional silicon chips with an estimated lifetime of more than one billion years. Their discovery is scheduled for publication in the June 10 issue of the American Chemical Society's Nano Letters, a monthly journal.

Alex Zettl and colleagues note in the new study that some of today's highest-density experimental storage media can retain ultra-dense data for only a fraction of a second. They note that William the Conqueror's Doomsday Book, written on vellum in 1086 AD, has survived 900 years. However, the medium used for a digital version of the book, encoded in 1986, failed within 20 years.

The researchers describe development of an experimental memory device consisting of an iron nanoparticle (1/50,000 the width of a human hair) enclosed in a hollow carbon nanotube. In the presence of electricity, the nanoparticle can be shuttled back and forth with great precision. This creates a programmable memory system that, like a silicon chip, can record digital information and play it back using conventional computer hardware. In lab and theoretical studies, the researchers showed that the device had a storage capacity as high as 1 terabyte per square inch (a trillion bits of information) and temperature-stability in excess of one billion years.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090525105418.htm

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Brilliant, and extraoridinarily simple. I knew technology would beat out archaic "writing methods" in due time.

[Occulus]

1. Now *this* is impressive.

Wow.

One billion years. One TB per square inch.

That's... astonishing.

[joshcryer]

3. I'd like to see any form of historical writing last that long!

It truly is astonishing. Now if only we can build it (this is all theoretical as far as I can tell). I think it's well within the realm of possiblity.

[Thor_MN]

2. A Nano Abacus?

[joshcryer]

4. Nice visual, excellent way to describe it!

[TheMadMonk]

5. Not just a nice visual. Assuming we can assemble such a device...

... it's a very possible way of increasing data density by a significant factor. It should be possible to shuttle more than one "bead" in the nano tube.

And given that building something on this scale almost certainly demands self-assembly. And if this proves to be the case, the possibility of moving into the third dimension is a logical next step.

Then there is the possibility of adapting the concept for computational purposes. A computer that freezes solid if power is removed, and resumes the instant power is reapplied, even a billion years later. Circuitry that only uses power when active.

A billion years is rather meaningless number unless some method can be developed to preserve the packaged storage medium itself for that period of time. The data will last as long as the physical substrate on which it is stored. How long will the read/write electronics remain functional? Or the packaging and its connecting points? How do we preserve the knowledge of how to access the data over that period of time? How to interface with such long lived storage devices?

But ignoring the hyperbole of the billion year lifetime claims, the other possibilities this idea opens up could prove as revolutionary as the intergrated circuit.

[joshcryer]

7. It sounds like that's what they're doing.

They can measure where the "bead" is within the nanotube, thus producing transition states. I don't know if those transition states are included in their 1TB per square inch metric, it sounds like it possibly might since they talk about measuring resistance (so each nanotube might be able to store a 100 bits all by itself).

If you can create a small circuit that can last for a billion years (in this case), then you can theoretically make a full device of the same materials (nanotubes, carbon composites, etc). It might be a little harder since you have to deal with expansion (the larger something is the more expansion has to do with its lastablity). But from my point of view the hardest part was creating long lasting objects at the nanoscale. Asteroids in the solar system are well over a billion years old which undergo very little changes throughout their existance.

Also, it's possible you can just make something out of nickle-steel or platinum-iridium some other very stable alloy with *instructions* on how to build the device to read it. Instructions in mathematical and chemical language. It'd be an interesting feat.

[HappyCynic]

6. Stability

I noticed that the article has turned "temperature-stability in excess of one billion years" (what the researchers said) into "an estimated lifetime of more than one billion years". It brings to mind http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=228x52199.
What factors other than temperature fluctuations will toast the memory before it even gets close to the billion years? How practical is this expected to be from both a manufacturing and durability perspective?
That being said, it's a fantastic area that should be explored and I hope it does turn out to be a practical discovery.

(On a side note, would it mean that computer memory, and therefore part of the internet, will be a series of tubes?)

[joshcryer]

8. All things can be reduced to thermal flux, this device obviously isn't invincible though.

I don't have access to the paper yet (trying to get it), but I would imagine that they basically accounted for large energy fluxes (and thus thermal fluxes) in their calculation. Carbon can make some of the most stable structures (nanotubes, buckyballs, diamond), and can potentially last a whole lot longer than a billion years if undisturbed except by the cosmic background radiation.

An EMP would end it pretty much instantly (potentially randomizing the bits in the system). They probably account for an ideal scenario in their calculation.

[Tesha]

9. Windows will destroy the data in less than a year. (NT)