{ What If someone hypothetically wanted to store something for 10,000 years, what would be the best medium to use? }
[I have seen this topic being discussed on Reddit and I found it interesting enough to post the results here. So trust me on this one.]
There are two scenarios:
1. The means to read the data is magically preserved over the 10,000 years, so only the storage medium must last the duration.
2. The means to read must be preserved through conventional means alongside the data.
So what are the options? Let’s use our creativity with these answers.
Using Bytes laser-engraved in diamonds, sent out to space onto an almost everlasting, precisely calculated orbit around Earth, Moon, both or simply around the Sun itself. Or maybe send it to a big stable asteroid in the asteroid belt, that should also last quite some time yet.
The probability of a disastrous cosmic event is less than a fatal nuke war on Earth or bigger earthquakes or simple human stealing (don't store it at home).The use of Sapphire disks with platinum coating. Though it may be over kill for a your mere 10,000 years
https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/13/3157081/andra-sapphire-disc-data-million-years
A cave wall seems like a pretty solid choice. As we know.
As a mental health therapist I have to say turn it from data into intergenerational trauma. It’s guaranteed to survive each generation, although creating a religion comes close, right? Or make cultural songs passed on verbally to carry information forward over thousands of years.
Gold plates like Voyager. Or perhaps DNA inside the population of a living organism, however, given enough time the useless genetic data you are passing on will be abandoned, the same way mitochondria abandoned the majority of their entire genome to specialize life inside animal cells.
A metal or stone plate fully embedded in glass. Digital? Not possible with any current tech.
I would use the most durable media ever used by humanity: the Clay tablet. Some of them have endured for 4200 years so far, which is how we know we shouldn't buy copper from Ea-nasir.
The Long Now Foundation did this with their Rosetta project: https://rosettaproject.org/ Etchings on a nickel plate.
- Historically, the best way to achieve something like that is to start a religion. In fact, the US government researched this topic in the 80s and religion was their solution.
The biggest problem you have is cultural and linguistic drift. You may be able to maintain data in english or math, but what guarantee do you have that your target era will be able to read the data?
- Inside of a mosquito, wrapped in amber (Jurassic park reference)
- Maybe titanium plates with QR codes on them as you can store a lot of data that way. At least in binary form. Then you just need an index for how to read it carved on its own titanium plate
- Use books in vacuum sealed zarges chest buried in a cave in the Rocky Mountains, with a cult that protects it. But you will run in the problem of understanding. Ten thousand years later and no one will understand your data anymore. As the Pyramids are four to five thousand years old and it takes us hundreds of years to understand what they wrote.
- A stable hegemonic, expansionist empire with your data forming part of it's core creation myth.
Now I wanna add to this last past my own little way to save the data, build a time machine and become a rice puddin lord with this video: (bear with me, this will make sense).
