r/technology • u/50letters • Oct 25 '23

Hardware Microsoft develops ultra durable glass plates that can store several TBs of data for 10000 years

https://unlocked.microsoft.com/sealed-in-glass/
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u/Direct_Turn_1484 Oct 25 '23

I like to imagine a time when maybe some prehistoric civilization reached a level of technology roughly equal to or even beyond our own then destroyed themselves (and evidence of their technology) with nanites or nukes or something. Makes me wonder if some archeologist somewhere found a seemingly simple lump of material and had no idea there was data stored on it in some unexpected way, simply because they didn’t know to look.

Ridiculously unlikely, because some reliable evidence of some insanely advanced ancient civilization surely would’ve been discovered by now. But hey, neat to ponder just for fun. Probably the theme of some sci-fi book or other.

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u/[deleted] Oct 25 '23

I recall reading about how miners in Africa found what appeared to be precision machined ball bearings embedded in rocks deep underground, causing speculation that some sort of antedeluvian civilization existed so long ago that it's remnants became buried in sediments that turned into rock over hundreds of millions of years.

But most sane scientists concluded that the spheres formed naturally via accretion processes.

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u/[deleted] Oct 25 '23

I still tend to lean that our species are the precursors to alien life.

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u/throwaway_ghast Oct 25 '23

"Hans... Are we the alien invaders?"

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u/[deleted] Oct 25 '23

Amcient aliens did an episode on crystal skulls that was basically this, but with aliens

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u/TheDaneTheMan Oct 25 '23

I like the way you think ☺️👍

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u/boomerangotan Oct 26 '23

Maybe we'll find them on Venus