New Uranium Compound Could Lead to Atomic Hard Drives

[infohippie]

On topic, do we really need that much hard drive space? I mean, a 250 gigger should be good for the average user, 500 seems pretty good for anyone that games or listens to a lot of music, downloads a lot of videos, etc. And if you need more, we have multiple terabytes now. I could see NASA or big businesses using this, but I really don't think the general public has any need of such massive amounts of space.

What, really?
I have nearly four terabytes of HDD in total between my desktop & media server, and less than one terabyte of that is still empty. I'll need to add a few more terabytes soon. 250 gig is tiny.

 

[infohippie]

However, I have to ask: what the hell do you have to fill up more than three terabytes? Three entire terabytes? The only ways I can think of are either really, really heavy torrenting of movies and entire TV shows, ripping your entire movie collection in the best quality imagineable, and/or having a couple hundred games that you don't want to take off.

Well, yeah, I have a lot of games on my desktop machine, about thirty or so installed at any one time. My server is also essentially a homemade DVR, plus I rip all my movies, tv series boxed sets, and music to it so everything's in one central location and I don't have to look around for discs for anything. Video takes up a lot of room. I'll need to add another two terabyte drive to the server pretty soon. I would be glad to be able to buy a 100 terabyte drive. I guess I'm not the average user.

 

[infohippie]

One last little question: I've been looking to rip a few movies to my own meager 500GB drive, but I don't know where to find a good program; what do you use, and if it isn't free or cheap do you know a good free and cheap one?

My server runs on Linux, so I use dvd::rip. I don't think there's a version of that available for Windows.
I used to use Magic DVD Ripper on Windows - it's very good, but it is paid software. WinX DVD Ripper might be what you need, but I haven't used that much so I can't say a lot about it. It's probably a good place to start though.

 

[SilentHunter7]

No need to worry, chemical compounds won't ever give you a nuclear explosion because they are exclusively electron exchanges, sharing, etc. (electrons being outside the nucleus)

Yeah. Plus, U-238 (Depleted Uranium) isn't fissile. It's U-235 that splits when it captures a neutron. To fission U-238 you need really REALLY fast moving neutrons, the kind usually only found in hydrogen bombs and the sun. And even then, the neutrons it gives off when it reacts are too slow to fission more U-238 atoms, so it can't sustain a reaction on its own.

Though I'm sure that won't stop all the concerned mothers from hearing "Uranium" and start mouthing off at Fox News about the 'danger'.

EDIT:
I wonder if there is a way you could use this tech for SRAM chips for ultra-dense storage on pen drives, memory cards, and solid state devices.

 

[Muco5681]

color me crazy but having uranium in a HDD kinda makes me a bit worried what good is it that i can have a HDD with 10000 TB when i get cancer form using it ad to that as well i live in a country were we can have all 4 seasons within the span of a week how will it fare in cold weather and the next day hot as hell weather?

 

[Bobbity]

It's crazy to think of it, but we really are living in the future.

 

[Zantos]

It's interesting, but it's no topological toric processor. One day I shall build one and be king of everything.

 

[TheAmokz]

Its all fun and games until your hard drive goes chernobyl.

 

[Midnight Crossroads]

You guys know you can buy uranium, right? Like legally off ebay. And that smoke detectors are already use the radioactive isotop Americium-241? This hardly sounds harmful. Although I've also heard that flawed diamonds are going to be used for quantum computers on this same site, so I'm not sure what to think.

 

[PoweD]

Anybody know what Ford Nucleon is?

 

[Smooth Operator]

On topic, do we really need that much hard drive space? I mean, a 250 gigger should be good for the average user, 500 seems pretty good for anyone that games or listens to a lot of music, downloads a lot of videos, etc. And if you need more, we have multiple terabytes now. I could see NASA or big businesses using this, but I really don't think the general public has any need of such massive amounts of space.

And the IBM Chairman said we will only ever need 5 computers, oh how wrong we can be sometimes.
I'll put it like this, imagine all the games/movies/music/pictures/books/software you ever bought or made can be one click away, you can't see that being beneficial?

But I'd prefer solid state drive improvements, this is still great tech but anything with moving parts is highly unreliable, maybe it's time we move on and do better.

 

[sosolidshoe]

Has anyone actually seen the video on this very compound on youtube? It is remarkable, what they've done but Steve Liddle himself and Martyn Poliakoff dismiss it due to the fact that it only works between 0 and 2 degrees kelvin.

Here's the video about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qZycn7o7Po


Also while you're at it, go ahead and watch everything else Brady Haran has done with the University of Nottingham, you won't regret it

What ever happened to memristor technology? Once we get that down, things like drive speed and storage capacity become memories, not concerns. One petabit per cm^3.(A petabit is 1024terabit, or 128TB). This would make the a 2.5in hard drive(laptop size) would be about 6350TB. A 3.5in hard drive would be just under 9000TB(8890TB). Of course, that's actually using a much larger portion of the drives, because swapping out drive plates for non-moving components that don't have current solid state drive problems would be nice.

The largest you could get right now as per the article would be around 400TB for a drive with read time delay. The memristor doesn't have that problem either. Programs would load faster, and with fewer errors.

Of course, with memristors, you can also use them as very efficient computers for data processing. They can be used as transistors, but at much lower voltages(1 to 1.1VDC). This could be used to multiply the battery life of your average laptop by a factor of about 3, unless you used anything that required moving parts. Your systems would stay cooler, run on lower voltages, because they are smaller in size than current semiconductors(3nm vs 25nm).


This just seems to be a stopgap until memristors are brought to market.

Do you have any conception of what advanced molecular magnets will do for technology? Screw hard drives, combine a properly researched variant of this compound with this micrometer-scale magnetic propulsion technology and we've got functional nanopropulsion. Throw in the advances being made in bio-energy techniques, plus entangled particle quantum information transmission, and we have functional nanomachines.

All of these technologies are about a decade away from non-research applications(entangled comms perhaps fiteen), throw in another decade or so to combine and test them, and we could see nanofabrication and medical nanotreatments being part of everyday life within the next 25 years.

Now we simply have to hope that corporate interests don't try and bury these advances to ensure the continuation of their crude rebranded 17th-century mercantilist economic system survives past it's extinction point.

 

[Crazy_Dude]

Probably wont ever happen in the near future. Stupid people will think that you will make your Computer a mini nuclear reactor that could explode at any moment. In reality its DEPLETED uranium and such a miniscule amount that there is no way anything could happen to it.

I am just sick of the wrong imagine nuclear power has. Its currently our best power resource aside from fossil fuels. But yet people still think Solar/Wind Energy will save them in the future when the fossil fuels run out. I am pretty sure that Solar/Wind Energy could never meet the demands of energy people need.

 

[Cry Wolf]

On topic, do we really need that much hard drive space? I mean, a 250 gigger should be good for the average user, 500 seems pretty good for anyone that games or listens to a lot of music, downloads a lot of videos, etc. And if you need more, we have multiple terabytes now. I could see NASA or big businesses using this, but I really don't think the general public has any need of such massive amounts of space.

I currently use about three terrabytes. I'd love to have larger hardrives, especially as the price per gigabyte will drop. Always a good thing for a PC gamer with a small wallet.

Now, if only they could get the internet to run at about 1GB per second, I would be happy. Hell, I'd be happy with a quarter of that.

Heh, I'd be happy with my internet running at a megabyte per second. Yay Australian internet!

 

[tkioz]

Sounds cool.

They'll have to come up with another thanks to the idiots that associate anything to do with the words "nuclear" "uranium" "radiation" with "EVIL" "BAD" "NO!"

 

[TheEvilCheese]

I am pretty sure that Solar/Wind Energy could never meet the demands of energy people need.

I do agree that Nuclear Power is a viable, and important, energy supply for the moment. We should be using more of it.

However, If we invested enough, I'm pretty sure we could be totally powered by renewable sources. I mean think how much unused solar energy hits the sahara every day. In fact, I think I read something a while ago to this effect.. ah! here it is.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5887597.ece

 

[Low Key]

I don't see this being used by anyone except for enterprise level stuff for a very long time. The consumer market should be more focused on solid state and NAND technology which is incredibly fast has the possibility of lasting for decades. Going back to magnetic HDDs for space that will never get used is silly.

 

[RA92]

On topic, do we really need that much hard drive space? I mean, a 250 gigger should be good for the average user, 500 seems pretty good for anyone that games or listens to a lot of music, downloads a lot of videos, etc. And if you need more, we have multiple terabytes now. I could see NASA or big businesses using this, but I really don't think the general public has any need of such massive amounts of space.

Good Sir, do not underestimate people's passion for music piracy!

 

[Flamey]

I don't know if I feels safe about a hard drive made out of nuclear waste.

 

[Aeshi]

Maybe the design teams should stop playing Fallout?