So Tuesday I had to initial four pages, a pair at two places. Then three pages signed with my printed name and date. It happens each month and then this gem showed up: Our DNA is becoming the world's tiniest hard drive Our genetic code is millions of times more efficient at storing data than existing solutions, which are costly and use immense amounts of energy and space. In fact, we could get rid of hard drives and store all the digital data on the planet within a couple hundred pounds of DNA. Using DNA as a high-density data storage medium holds the potential to forge breakthroughs in biosensing and biorecording technology and next-generation digital storage, but researchers haven't been able to overcome inefficiencies that would allow the technology to scale. . . . Now if we could just apply DNA technology or even basic biometrics to medical paper work. Bob Wilson
I wonder how the read or replication error rates compare, DNA vs magnetic hard drives vs flash memory. Storage life expectancy too. To some extent, proper error correction coding can cover for higher error rates. But we still need to watch the basic differences.
You're still going to need some kinda two or three factor authentication to back up the bio-siggie, since people tend to eave copies of their hard drives everywhere you go. That's how it was designed....
They're not teaching cursive writing in schools any more; the clock is ticking on replacement for signatures... Geez I remember starting out with nib pens, ink bottle in a hole in the corner of the desk, and a cool little blotter paper. Being a leftie I adopted curled down hand position, so I could write without smearing the ink. Then they switched us over to ballpoints. And the Maclean Method of Printing and Writing: Millions of Canadians followed B.C. principal's script - The Globe and Mail
What blows me away is when I see our Earth next to a model of the Sun the size of a basketball and the Earth is like a grain of salt. Then our own sun? is the same ratio to a larger star - & that same ratio to a larger star, then the same thing to an even larger star. Full reverse - all the way down to molecules on the chromosomal ladder. We are not the smallest on the scale of big, but we're not far from small. .
I had a guy who made me sign a form repeatedly until it EXACTLY matched the signature on my passport. He kept saying, "No, make it look like THIS!" I was running out of room, so he made me keep practicing on another sheet until I got it just right. FINALLY, he was satisfied. The kicker is that when I started by pulling out my passport, I hadn't even signed it. He was the one who made me sign it! He had just finished watching me sign my passport, then got all pissy that my next signature had to match.
I pretty much LOST the ability to write cursive, many decades back, when I got into drafting. Nothing but printing. And then typing. I keep thinking to pick it up again, practice, but never seem to get around to it. Our grandkids can barely print... Or multiply a couple of numbers between 1 and 9...
At 2.2 mm, that would be a far larger salt grain than anything in my pantry (0.3 mm typical?). Though I've certainly seen specialty salts that large. The sun's diameter is 108 earth diameters. Or 100X for a close-enough comparison here. You went 3 steps up, or over 1,000,000X, which is much too far. The largest red giant stars I'm seeing reference to, are about 1500 solar diameters. On the scales of things that I look at, we are still a very long ways from "small". While a person's height might be one-billionth the diameter of the sun, or one-trillionth that of a red giant star, s/he is also 10 billion times larger than a hydrogen atom, or quadrillion times larger than the proton nucleus of that atom. And even that proton is made of up much smaller particles ... Yes, according to most measurements, which vary by time (it is a variable red giant star) and wavelength and other factors. Betelgeuse is about 700 to 1000 solar diameters, vs 330 for Mar's orbit, and 1100 for Jupiter. The largest known red giants would fit inside Saturn's orbit, about 2000 solar diameters.
