{"id":3649,"date":"2012-07-29T23:27:59","date_gmt":"2012-07-29T13:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/?p=3649"},"modified":"2012-07-29T23:27:59","modified_gmt":"2012-07-29T13:27:59","slug":"information-that-lasts-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/2012\/07\/information-that-lasts-forever-3649.html","title":{"rendered":"Information That Lasts Forever"},"content":{"rendered":"

I presume forever is impossible, seeing as our universe probably has a finite existence \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

But if you want some information to last a very, very long time, it would need to be:<\/p>\n

In a language that will always be understood<\/li>\n
In a format that can always be read<\/li>\n
Durable<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
The current trend is for English to become the global language of planet Earth. But languages (for example, English), can evolve rapidly – so the best we can do is write the information in basic English<\/strong> and preferably with as many synonyms as possible.<\/p>\n
The format is easy – visual<\/strong>. Digital is hard to spot, and hard to decode once technology has moved on or disappeared.<\/p>\n
Durability<\/strong> is difficult. Fortunately the nuclear waste industry has a strong need for leaving super-durable, easily read messages – and here’s a solution<\/a> they have come up with:<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n
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 \u20ac25,000 to make, but Charton says it will survive for a million years. The aim, Charton told the Euroscience Open Forum here, is to provide “information for future archaeologists.” But, he concedes: “We have no idea what language to write it in.”<\/p>\n
Archaeologist Cornelius Holtorf of Linnaeus University in Sweden showed meeting participants an early attempt at warning future generations: a roughly 1-meter-wide stone block with the words “Caution – Do Not Dig” written in English with some smaller text explaining that there is nuclear waste below. But who knows what language its discoverers will understand in thousands or hundreds of thousands of years\u2014or even if they will be human beings?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I suggest they write it in dozens of languages, using every synonym for danger and nuclear and buried they can think of. Fortunately the new solution is capable of storing a lot of info for a very long time:<\/p>\n
The sapphire disk is one product of that effort. It’s made from two thin disks, about 20 centimeters across, of industrial sapphire. On one side, text or images are etched in platinum\u2014Charton says a single disk can store 40,000 miniaturized pages\u2014and then the two disks are molecularly fused together. All a future archaeologist would need to read them is a microscope. The disks have been immersed in acid to test their durability and to simulate ageing. Charton says they hope to demonstrate a lifetime of 10 million years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I think \u20ac25,000 is an absolute bargain for 40,000 pages. That’s less than 1 Euro per page. Sounds like an opportunity to get 40,000 opinions of our current world written in a variety of languages (or drawn) and placed somewhere as a million-year time capsule. I’d pay 1 Euro to be part of that!<\/p>\n
Could be sent on the next Voyager spacecraft too \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I presume forever is impossible, seeing as our universe probably has a finite existence \ud83d\ude09
\nBut if you want some information to last a very, very long time, it would need to be:<\/p>\n
In a language that will always be understood
\nIn a format that can always be read
\nDurable<\/p>\n
The current trend is for English to become the global language of planet Earth. But languages (for example, English), can evolve rapidly – so the best we can do is write the information in basic English and preferably with as many synonyms as possible.
\nThe format is easy – visual. Digital is hard to spot, and hard to decode once technology has moved on or disappeared.
\nDurability is difficult. Fortunately the nuclear waste industry has a strong need for leaving super-durable, easily read messages – and here’s a solution they have come up with:<\/p>\n
Patrick Charton of the French nuclear waste management agency ANDRA presented one possible solution …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[316],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archaeology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3649"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3756,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3649\/revisions\/3756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/survive2012.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}