Long Term (archaeological time) Information Storage Methods

[Delta4Embassy]

Joking about clay tablets just now I found myself wondering about information storage. Are we anywhere close to being able to encode information easily decipherable (like binary) into our genes or DNA? If we could, and life itself reproducing itself and thus the information, wouldn't that be the best ultra ong term method to preserve information?

And yes, I heard about this on some alien doc claiming this very thing. But is it actually possible or within our reach?

 

[mamooth]

Million-Year Data Storage Disk Unveiled | MIT Technology Review

 

[whitehall]

Unless the radical left holds a book and computer chip burning party when they get angry about the 1st Amendment we should be at least as good at preserving archaeological information as the Neanderthal cave writing.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

Million-Year Data Storage Disk Unveiled | MIT Technology Review

Thanks for the article. Not sure I buy it though. Remembering some doc about the official Kilogram losing atoms and thus weight over time my thinking if the same would hold true for any data stored on a disk, especially over a million year span. Presumedly it'd lose so much mass and thus data so as to be useless.

Official Kilogram Losing Mass: Scientists Propose Redefining It As A Precise Number Of Carbon Atoms
Official Kilogram Losing Mass: Scientists Propose Redefining It As A Precise Number Of Carbon Atoms -- ScienceDaily


How much is a kilogram? It turns out that nobody can say for sure, at least not in a way that won't change ever so slightly over time. The official kilogram -- a cylinder cast 118 years ago from platinum and iridium and known as the International Prototype Kilogram or "Le Gran K" -- has been losing mass, about 50 micrograms at last check. Now two US professors say it's time to define the kilogram in a new and more elegant way. They've launched a campaign aimed at redefining the kilogram as the mass of a very large -- but precisely-specified -- number of carbon-12 atoms.