New Uranium Compound Could Lead to Atomic Hard Drives

[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?

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

I know it was meant to be a joke but I seriously hope no one thinks that this even has the potential to exploded or do any real damage. The Alpha particles and probably Beta will be stopped by the casing on a normal hard drive. I don't even know if it does produce much radiation but I do it is used in shielding also I doubt we will use it due to the temperatures required.

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.

Obviously this is not viable due to need to send the energy elsewhere but there are 6 spots around the world. Not too big of an area and if we were to set up a modern solar power station each of those areas together they would produce enough energy to feed the world's energy need at this point in time. Over all we get about 2x10[sup]17[/sup]W per day of energy from the sun hitting Earth. Now I think that makes just solar energy much more viable than you are making it out to be.

Wind while though unpredictable is a great supplement to energy in places where there are relatively high winds like Ireland. So while not a permanent solution it is better not to put all your eggs in one basket.

 

[Ewyx]

ITT: People who don't understand the difference between different type of radiation.

 

[iblis666]

Brings a whole new meaning to rage-quitting.

Sir, you win this thread and deserve a cookie:

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.

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.

well as long as processing of the data is done in a timely fashion i could see a great use for this in games that wish to look as realistic as possible such as city sized space ships fighting each other with massive amounts of drones blasting the shit out of each other and the 2 ships. All the while every detail is being rendered so that each piece from the battle not only is deformed properly but then acts as it should when a drone is blown apart or a chunk of a ship is destroyed not to mention any asteroids that might be in the area.

 

[Jman1236]

With the way my laptop overheats, it would be considered a WMD with one of these hard drives.

 

[PiOfCube]

As long as it isn't one of the fissile isotopes, the compound retards the reaction to air and you don't lick your hard drive, I'm sure it will be pretty safe LOL

Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8vVZTvJNGk as our Prof. explains all ;-)

 

[spartan231490]

Yeah, in theese times of terrorist scares just who is going to be comfortable with releasing Uranium to the general public.

And dont think like someone who knows that this cant be purified to pure Uranium, think like someone who believes Fox News.

All Uranium is not created equal. If I had to guess, I would bet this is a more stable isotope, and you would need to add neutrons to it's nucleus to make it weapons-grade. I'm not sure if there is any way to do that, I believe that neutron bombardment leads to rapid break-down of the element into other, lighter elements.
If this isn't true, however, yes it's a horrible idea.

 

[Yopaz]

I am pretty sure depleted uranium is still pretty dangerous to have. From what I've heard a lot of birth defects have occurred in Iraq due to all the depleted uranium from the Gulf War lying around has caused genes to mutate. Seeing how I probably wont need more than 2 TB on HDD i don't think I will need or ever want to be exposed to this just because I am going to get enough space to store everything I don't need on it.
Also, the public isn't ready for this unless they call it something else than Uranium.
That's why NMR (Nuclear magnetic resonance, the kind of body scan that's commonly used) is called simply MR. As soon as you call it something with nuclear the crowd gets frightened.

Edit: missed the part that said how much uranium would be used... Yeah, that's not bad, and as a few other say, it doesn't take much to make it secure. A little metal surrounding it and it will be good to go. I am also shocked with those who don't get that depleted uranium can't explode. Most of the uranium we have can't explode, and the things you need to do to make it explode. I did mention it though. People fear radioactivity without knowing too much about it.

 

[FranckN]

Brings a whole new meaning to rage-quitting.

Sir, you win this thread and deserve a cookie:

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.

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.

What you said it sounds like:
"640kb ought to be enough for anybody" said by Bill Gates some years ago.

 

[headshotcatcher]

the research is using non-radioactive depleted uranium, a by-product of uranium enrichment.

I find this extraordinarily hard to believe, mostly because there's no such thing as non-radioactive uranium, considering the fact that it has no stable isotope.

Still, a depleted version would be markedly less radioactive, so you could probably encase it in a thin sheet of lead and be perfectly safe.

A bag of table salt is probably more radioactive than a bimolecular uranium compound. You wouldn't call table salt radioactive, while it is (in a tiny degree), so in this case the uranium compound is practically non-radioactive as well.