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This long-term data storage will last 14 billion years (www.theregister.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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"the medium is silica crystal, similar to optical cable, it's highly durable. It's also capacious: The technology can store up to 360 TB of data on a 5-inch glass platter."

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[–] 39 points 11 months ago (21 children)

This grinds my gears any time that a product is touted as lasting X time. Did you put it through a typical use case or scenario for that X time? No? Then you cannot definitively say that it will last that long.

Based on their bullshit statement, I can last 7 years pounding someone's ass relentlessly without pause for any reason. Trust me bro.

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  • [–] 23 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    The degradation of materials is pretty well understood. If it’s truly cut from a well known material with zero factors that could effect that degradation, it’s mostly safe to make en educated wish.

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  • [–] -1 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    "zero factors that could effect that degradation"

    So in other words, only a completely unrealistic estimate can be made? After all, our sun is not going to be the same in 5 billion years, so unless the material comes along with a solution to maintain the material's temperature (as per the manufacturer's website the longevity is temperature-dependent) then 14 billion years sounds rather unlikely.

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    You don’t take into account external factors like that. This is like saying “oh your watch battery will last an entire year? What about if I launch it into the sun‽‽”

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    You can put it on a spacecraft, and fling it at a bunch of star systems. Also preserving knowledge is still one of our hardest topic to solve. After the resources wars, what will computing even look like? Will we even make it another 3k years? How will we warn the next inhabitants of our pitfalls? Surely anything containing rubber gaskets will be ruined, all capacitors will have leaked. Any iron will have rusted.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    I don't think the point is that you can sue them if it only lasts 13 billion years, but the under current conditions it's projected lifetime is 14 billion years. Which is a very big number, meaning it's pretty much guaranteed it won't break in 100, 1000 or 10000 years.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Any volunteers for testing the claim?

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    If you can get me safely to .999 C, slow me down, and get me back to Earth at .999 C, sure. The entire trip for me would only be about two years, provided a consistent 1 G of acceleration. Just please make it so that reversing acceleration doesn't completely screw me, so my spaceship doesn't have to do a complicated flip a bit after the halfway point on each trip. I'm certain that wouldn't be good for my stomach.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    I mean, people do predict things based on evidence. Galileo didn't actually go to outer space and verify that the earth was going around the sun.

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Didn't they think in those days that your eyes sent beams out to touch whatever they were looking at?

    I wonder if he thought his eyes were sending beams out into space.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I don't see how that's relevant here.

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago*

    If his eyes were sending out rays, they did go out into space.

    But that's not actually how it works. Although it is how it works in video games (raytracing).

    I think it is just a fun way of thinking about it.

    In reality, things from space were travelling to earth to interact with Galileo's retina.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Beyond that, the sun has about 5 billion years before we might not be able to starlift it back to a "younger" state, so The Earth and Venus may not exist at all if we don't get our asses in gear for sustainable intragalactic life in the next century or so.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I am failing to connect the two time scales you mention.

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