14 comments

  • dtgriscom 18 hours ago
    This isn't going to be durable. Not because of climate change, but because of surface energy.

    Making a boundary between different substances requires energy, and forces will act to minimize those boundaries. This expresses as surface tension in liquids, where a drop will pull in its borders to minimize its boundary. It also happens with solids; if you pack a ball of snow and leave it for a few days, depending on the temperature it will slowly fuse into ice.

    Over time, the ice around these information-containing bubbles will slowly move to minimize the surface area of the bubble boundaries, ending up as spheres. It won't be quick, but over decades (again, depending on the temperature) it will happen.

    So, no, it won't be practical. (I'm sure you're surprised.)

    (The effect of surface energy is my favorite fact from "Introduction to Solid State Chemistry" at MIT. Professor Witt was excellent; he imparted an enormous amount of information clearly and engagingly.)

    * https://news.mit.edu/2002/witt

    * https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/display/dmsehistory/3.091

  • meindnoch 21 hours ago
    I have an even better idea: manipulating growth rings of trees for message storage. If you want to store a 0, you cover the tree with a tarp for a year to stunt its growth. If you want to store a 1, you leave it uncovered. Bandwidth is 1bit/year.
    • hostyle 18 hours ago
      Won't the tree die if covered for an entire year, and thus when you ... EOFError: Please remove tarp
      • meindnoch 16 hours ago
        You can make the tarp semi-translucent, so that it lets through just enough light to keep the tree alive, and produce a thin growth ring for that year.
  • 0xbadcafebee 1 day ago
    > The ice media can be preserved for a long time

    lol I have some bad news

  • sprior 1 day ago
    Let's call it Amazon Glacier
  • drfuchs 1 day ago
    1979 called, and they want their "Intel Magnetics 7110" one megabit bubble memory chips back. At the time, it seemed that bubble memory would supplant disk, tape, and even core memory (RAM to you). Maybe memristors will happen.
  • baruchel 21 hours ago
    Reading the title, I immediately thought of Rabelais's "frozen words": https://www.classicalpursuits.com/where-words-unfreeze-the-t...
  • hnanon12341 1 day ago
    Incredible abstract image.
  • lmpdev 1 day ago
    Is this article trying to milk an Ig Nobel Prize?

    If so, they’re very talented at it

  • speedylight 22 hours ago
    Honey turn on the stove I have some files I need to delete.
  • Mistletoe 1 day ago
    It’s neat but I can’t think of a worse storage medium.
  • lloydatkinson 22 hours ago
    The image at the top implies this involves time travel which would be necessary for the example of creating a bubble message in 1925 to read in 2025.
  • AlienRobot 1 day ago
    This will be really useful after the nuclear winter.
  • dzink 1 day ago
    How did they come up with this idea?
    • macintux 1 day ago
      Probably inspired by the first Michael Bay Transformers movie.
  • moralestapia 1 day ago
    Can't wait to use the AWS version of this.