A strange museum at the ‘centre of the world’ | Hacker News Reader

A strange museum at the ‘centre of the world’

bbc.com

63 pointsMiriamWeiner13 comments

First time I saw this thing was on a drive from Southern Arizona to San Diego. (There really aren’t that many reasons to be out there.) The pyramid is clearly visible from the Interstate. I remember thinking: “WTF is this doing here?” It was a little surreal.

I knew exactly what this this article would link to the minute I read the title. I must have driven past that pyramid and the weird little church on the hill dozens of times before I finally bothered to stop and go take a look. Weird place in deed.

First thought was that this is unnecessary because enough people will always keep a local cache of Wikipedia or whatever handy.

Second thought was a conversation between an electrical engineering professor I had in college and one of my classmates. We were learning about flip-flop circuits, which led to a discussion of computer memory in general. The conversation went:

Prof: Flip-flops and latches will lose their memory when powered off, so not necessarily the best solution for storing something important.

Classmate: Then how does my USB memory stick store data when it's unpowered?

P: [explanation of floating-gate MOSFETs, which can hold data intact practically forever, although actually forever is a different story]

C: What's the best way we know of of storing data for the longest possible time?

P: Carve it into the side of a mountain.

5D optical data storage is all the rage these days. Wouldn't want your data to disappear with a tectonic plate shift.

I grew up in Boston and there are headstones from the 19th century carved in granite that are already entirely illegible. How is this data going to stand a chance against erosion?

There is very little erosion in the desert, unlike in cities, where acid rain and humidity will break down even the hardiest rocks.

What about sand + wind?

That's what I was wondering. The entire monument doesn't need to be eroded, only the fine etching.

Would the best way to preserve it actually be to allow it to be buried in sand?

I clicked the BBC link and after reading a few paragraphs with many teaser words still no picture is shown? I reach the end of the article and yes there is a picture, if you click all the links to find it.

http://www.parafame.org/DPP07DA0C0D152627%20cropped.jpg

I wanted to make something like this myself, it's been on my mind for a while now. I have been thinking of using laser-engraved aluminum panels instead of granite, and mount them on a cave somewhere. Anyone have any idea of how long the aluminum can last? Is it at least 1000 years?

> Anyone have any idea of how long the aluminum can last? Is it at least 1000 years?

Probably depends on how deeply you engrave them.

You might be interested in looking at http://rosettaproject.org/ or talking to some of the people who worked on that. I assume they did a lot of research on materials and engraving processes (although they finished their prototypes a decade ago, so it might not be as state-of-the-art as it could be).

This is really going to confuse the archeologists who rediscover it in the year 6000.

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