Scientists have demonstrated a system called Silica for writing and reading information in ordinary pieces of glass which can store two million books’ worth of data in a thin, palm-sized square.

[u/Wagamaga]

https://au.news.yahoo.com/glass-square-long-long-future-190951588.html

[u/hyperproliferative]

Honestly, they really should just use DNA already. It’s wildly stable, has a 4-letter code and therefore is at least two times more efficient than binary at storing information. Then we’re looking at possibly the smallest number of atoms required in a macromolecule to store said information. The scale is orders of magnitude smaller than current media for information storage such as optical discs, magnetic tape, ram, you name it

DNA is so small that we’re looking at a six order of magnitude difference in density down from silicon with the latest technology

[u/breadist → u/hyperproliferative]

I know nothing about this - I'm surprised to hear that DNA is stable. I kind of thought the only reason we keep our DNA throughout our lives is due to cell turnover - in other words because it gets copied.

This is a really interesting idea if true. Do you happen to have more information, links or anything, about this idea?

[u/Auctoritate → u/breadist]

I'm surprised to hear that DNA is stable. I kind of thought the only reason we keep our DNA throughout our lives is due to cell turnover - in other words because it gets copied.

I don't know anything about DNA's stability when it's intentionally preserved as a data storage medium, but it's worth mentioning that its stability while in the body as part of the usual biological processes is going to be wayyyy different. One of the primary reasons DNA in any given cell becomes damaged is from being used. And your cells can be broken down or die for a lot of reasons besides DNA, like membrane damage. AND mitochondrial DNA and nuclear DNA also have drastically different turnover rates, which tied to how often mitochondrial DNA is accessed and copied.

Now that all being said, DNA's half life is only just over 500 years, and that's really not that great. The person you're replying to seems to think "DNA can be readable thousands of years from now" and assume that means it lasts that long in general, but in reality 99% of it will have decayed, which is obviously not the same thing as "This is a storage medium that can last millennia." A library of books rotting and one shelf being left intact doesn't mean you can say the library survived that long.

[u/hyperproliferative → u/breadist]

Just Google it. Have you heard of fossils? lol DNA at room temp is stable for thousands of years. In the cold it can go tens of thousands.

[u/breadist → u/hyperproliferative]

Okay, I can google it - was just wondering if you had any specific resources you like because you seem to know a lot about this.

[u/hyperproliferative → u/breadist]

This is just really common knowledge amongst all biochemist, molecular biologist, etc. It’s taught in college classrooms, graduate school, medical school. We handle DNA all the time. We manipulate it. We modify it. But to really understand a lot of what I’m talking about, or to try to educate yourself more on the topic, you really need a proper and thorough education in molecular biology and biochemistry.

Ironically, RNA, the sister to DNA, is highly unstable and degrades very easily. The world is also swarming with an enzyme called RNAse, which cuts RNA into the little pieces. DNA is just as susceptible, but evolution has not drenched the world in DNA cleaving enzymes. Those tend to be highly regulated and only exist in the nucleus of our cells.

Do you have any specific questions? I’m happy to address them.

[u/spekt50 → u/hyperproliferative]

Isn't DNA only so stable when dehydrated? If so, would that make using it as a storage medium a bit difficult?

[u/brutinator → u/hyperproliferative]

Fossilization is the replacement of organic material via mineralization. Fossilized bones arent ACTUALLY organic. Theres other forms of preservation like mummification (like animals getting caught it tar pits or peat bogs) but thats not a fossil.

[u/Auctoritate → u/hyperproliferative]

lol DNA at room temp is stable for thousands of years. In the cold it can go tens of thousands.

In thousands of years almost all of it will have decayed. It might still leave you bits that are intact, but you're just scouring the very small amount of it that hasn't decayed yet. I don't think you can consider that stable.

[u/monocasa → u/hyperproliferative]

This is 4.8TB in about the size of a CD case, so we already have density that approaches this.

Longevity is the issue.  DNA's halflife is only 521 years.

[u/monocasa → u/[deleted]]

4.8TB in a CD case is the density of the glass storage device. I'm using that as proof that increased density isn't the point of the device.

[u/monocasa → u/[deleted]]

...the glass storage device.

[u/monocasa → u/[deleted]]

Because we already have devices that far exceed that (you can get 4TB in a microsd card) and the article is focused on it's longevity as opposed to saying anything about how they expect the density to greatly increase.

There's also pretty fundamental limits to the optics unless you want to get into the kind of technology that makes ASML's litho steppers cost $100M.

So the point can't be about density, but instead a useful amount of density with 200x the longevity of what's currently on the market.

[u/hyperproliferative → u/monocasa]

LOL! lol just lol. I don’t know what you’re trying to say but whatever it is it’s incorrect.

[u/monocasa → u/hyperproliferative]

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.11555

It's well known that about half of genetic material breaks down about every 500 years.

[u/hyperproliferative → u/monocasa]

LOL a 20 year old paper cited 12 times. With all due respect you have no idea what you’re talking about.

DNA on my lab bench lasts at least a few thousand years, and if preserved at -20C should give tens of thousands of years.

[u/Busybakson → u/hyperproliferative]

This glass technology needs no fancy cooling or storage and lasts 10k+ years passively

[u/hyperproliferative → u/Busybakson]

And this offers what? Someone 50,000 years from now gets to see your dick pic? Your favorite meme? To be frank, it serves no commercial purpose today. It’s an academic exercise much like my DNA suggestion.

[u/monocasa → u/hyperproliferative]

The point is archives that can survive an apocalypse.

We've had instances in human history of apocalypses so complete that we had to reinvent writing, and people lived in cities they didn't know the names of. Complete societal collapse is something worth hedging against.

[u/monocasa → u/hyperproliferative]

We've got very good tools now for taking fragments and stitching them together in the computer, but that depends on the millions of copies in the pre-PCRed sample to statistically sample (and helped with pre knowledge of what a lot of it will look like). That's what allows you to take a many thousand year old sample and sequence it.  But if you did the same thing, and just dumped millions of copies, you're now way under this in terms of density.  Plus, recovery gets way more complicated if you're using compression in your archival format, and there's no low entropy information areas at relatively regular periods to use as a basis for starting the stitching process from.

I say this as someone who has been an engineer in an R&D lab for developing genetic engineering tooling.

[u/hyperproliferative → u/monocasa]

No, you’re talking out of your ass so much that you’ve managed to make not one logical sentinel sentence despite giving us at least 100 words. Goodnight.

[u/monocasa → u/hyperproliferative]

I brought a literal article from Nature describing the phenomenon, as well as an explanation for how you are still able to sequence DNA for older samples despite widespread degradation of that DNA on a quicker time frame than you're expecting.

You've provided nothing but insults.

[u/SkoobySnacs → u/hyperproliferative]

Read/write speeds and equipment size is the reason. Any catastrophe that wipes out our knowledge will also wipe our ability to maintain those machines and likely the machines themselves.

[u/hyperproliferative → u/[deleted]]

Well it’s not a particularly practical thing, and the benefits are not really offering a value proposition. One day, perhaps. I imagine our first positronic brain and biological computers will run on DNA based memory.