Keep it forever
DNA memory will preserve traces of our civilization millions of years after death
Sergey Vasiliev, Naked Science
Modern memory carriers are not only rapidly becoming obsolete, but also simply getting old. Magnetic films, DVDs, and Blue-ray discs are capable of storing a record for a maximum of decades. In order for the information to remain intact for centuries and millennia, you will have to use the recipe of nature – DNA molecules.
Theoretically, DNA has a high density of information storage: 1 g of it is able to hold 455 exabytes, that is, the most accumulated by the modern Internet. Its durability is no less remarkable: it is enough to recall that scientists isolate DNA fragments from remains hundreds of thousands of years old, the storage conditions of which were far from ideal.
Drawing by Philipp Stoussel from the ETH Zurich press release: Data-storage for eternity – VM.
To evaluate the possibilities of DNA as an information storage device for an extremely long time, Swiss scientists investigated the process of accumulation of errors in it. The nucleotides adenine and cytosine were used to encode 0, and guanine and thymine – 1; for better preservation, DNA was sublimated, completely purified from moisture, and sealed in impermeable glass tubes. As an experiment, the text of one of the ancient state acts of Switzerland, as well as one of the works of Archimedes, was recorded on this "biological carrier" for a total of 81 Kbytes.
Ideally, such DNA should be stored at subzero temperatures, but the researchers created less favorable conditions for it, keeping it at 60, 65 and 70 ° C for a week, and then tried to read the information recorded on it. To correct possible errors, an algorithm with Reed–Solomon codes was used, which are popular, for example, when restoring data from CDs. However, noise-resistant codes were not even needed: the reading passed without errors.
A diagram from the article by Grass et al. Robust Chemical Preservation of Digital Information on DNA in Silica with Error-Correcting Codes,
published in the journal Angewandte Chemie – VM.
Extrapolating these results, the authors state that when stored at 10 ° C, DNA will safely save data for at least 2 thousand years, and in good frost (-18 ° C) – more than 2 million years. In this regard, a project is proposed to record on DNA and preserve in it all the information accumulated by modern humanity. As we already know, it will not require large volumes for storage, but you will need noticeable finances.
Even in the Swiss experiment, about $1,000 was spent on recording 81 KB of data. If we take this figure as a base, we can calculate that billions will be needed to turn all Wikipedia articles into DNA. There may simply not be enough money to digitize all the knowledge of mankind.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru16.02.2015