{"id":17175,"date":"2024-09-05T21:17:25","date_gmt":"2024-09-05T13:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/microsoft-joins-with-students-to-document-humanity-with-a-golden-record-of-glass\/"},"modified":"2024-09-05T21:17:25","modified_gmt":"2024-09-05T13:17:25","slug":"microsoft-joins-with-students-to-document-humanity-with-a-golden-record-of-glass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/microsoft-joins-with-students-to-document-humanity-with-a-golden-record-of-glass\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft joins with students to document humanity with a \u2018Golden Record\u2019 of glass"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full-width\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"630\" height=\"420\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/240905-record-630x420.jpg\" alt=\"Richard Black holds a Project Silica data storage platter\" class=\"wp-image-837834\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/240905-record-630x420.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/240905-record-1260x840.jpg 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/240905-record-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/240905-record-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/240905-record-2048x1366.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" class=\"wp-element-caption\">Richard Black, research director for Microsoft\u2019s Project Silica, holds a data storage platter. (Microsoft Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Forty-seven years after NASA sent a \u201cGolden Record\u201d into deep space to document humanity\u2019s view of the world, Microsoft\u2019s Project Silica is teaming up with a citizen-science effort to lay the groundwork \u2014 or, more aptly, the glasswork \u2014 for doing something similar.<\/p>\n<p>Golden Record 2.0, a project created by students, teachers and researchers affiliated with Avenues: The World School, is also getting an assist from artist Jon Lomberg, who was the design director for Golden Record 1.0.<\/p>\n<p>The original Golden Record project involved preserving imagery and sounds from around the world on gold-plated phonograph records. Copies of the record were placed on NASA\u2019s Voyager 1 and 2 probes and launched into space in 1977. The idea was that if space travelers came across the records in the distant future, they could decipher the recorded archive and learn what our world was like in the 20th century.<\/p>\n<p>Golden Record 2.0\u2019s organizers are going after the same idea, even though they\u2019re still looking into how their archive would be packaged and launched.<\/p>\n<p>Project Silica could play a role in the packaging. Richard Black, a manager at Microsoft Research\u2019s Cambridge lab in Britain, has been leading an effort to store data inside thin platters of fused silica glass. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt does that using ultrashort laser pulses that make a permanent, detectable and yet transparent modification to the glass crystal, so the data ends up as durable as the piece of glass itself,\u201d Black explained in a Microsoft podcast called Collaborators.  <\/p>\n<p>Each coaster-sized platter could store several terabytes of data for many millennia, according to Microsoft. The data can be read out using a microscope, and decoded using machine-learning algorithms.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Storing data for thousands of years | Microsoft Project Silica\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-rfEYd4NGQg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Black and his colleagues encoded a couple of test platters for Golden Record 2.0. They also created a glass-based instruction guide that could help anyone who came across the platters \u2014 either aliens or humans from the far future \u2014 figure out how to read them. \u201cObviously, humanity isn\u2019t going to give up on microscopes, but if we can explain to extraterrestrials how they would go about reading a Silica platter, then it should be pretty obvious that we can explain to our human descendants how to do so,\u201d Black said.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the Golden Record 2.0 team is following the model used by Lomberg and the other creators of the original Golden Record, who digitized images as well as natural sounds, music and spoken words for their archive of humanity.<\/p>\n<p>Back then, the internet was still in its infancy. Today, the 2.0 team is taking advantage of online tools to solicit multimedia contributions and get feedback on the media contributed by others.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PREVIOUSLY:<\/strong> How Microsoft put a \u2018Superman\u2019 movie on a piece of glass<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI like to think of it as sort of a time capsule of humanity that was designed to represent us \u2014 who we are as a species, what we love, why we love it, what we do, and our diversity, why we\u2019re all different, why we do different things \u2014 to possible extraterrestrials,\u201d said team member Dexter Greene, who\u2019s beginning his freshman year as an engineering student at the University of Michigan.<\/p>\n<p>Lomberg helped Greene and his teammates select and organize the content for the archive. He also filled them in on the story behind the original Golden Record, and the history and fundamentals of interstellar communication.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople always ask me how I would do the Golden Record differently today,\u201d Lomberg told GeekWire in an email. \u201cI began this project at Avenues as a way of answering that question. Created by high schoolers and the most modern technology, this is a next-generation message to the stars.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Over the decades, several other projects have styled themselves as successors to the Golden Record project. Lomberg himself was in charge of one of those efforts, which was called the OneEarth Message. More recently, the Arch Mission Foundation has had micro-miniaturized archives sent into space with the aid of partners ranging from SpaceX, Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines to Microsoft and the University of Washington.<\/p>\n<p>The Golden Record 2.0 team hasn\u2019t yet secured a ride to space. However, Greene said he and his teammates have been \u201ctalking a bit\u201d with the team behind a similar effort called Humanity\u2019s Message to the Stars (a.k.a. Message in a Bottle). That project is led by Jonathan Jiang, a researcher at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.<\/p>\n<p>Greene said commercial space ventures, including SpaceX, could provide additional options. \u201cWe\u2019ve thought about all of that, and we\u2019ve been reaching out to other space agencies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Black said the effort is worth taking on even if Golden Record 2.0 never gets to the stars. \u201cI think encouraging humanity to reflect on itself \u2014 where we are, the challenges ahead for us as a species here on planet Earth \u2014 you know, this is a good time to think those thoughts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Greene agreed. \u201cWe\u2019ve given a lot of thought to that,\u201d he said. \u201cEven if the record doesn\u2019t reach extraterrestrials, is it worth it? \u2026 It\u2019s so worth it, just for us to reflect on where we are, and how we can improve what we\u2019ve done in the past, and what we can do in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Richard Black, research director for Microsoft\u2019s Project Silica, holds a data storage platter. (Microsoft Photo) Forty-seven years after NASA sent a \u201cGolden Record\u201d into deep space to document humanity\u2019s view of the world, Microsoft\u2019s Project Silica is teaming up with a citizen-science effort to lay the groundwork \u2014 or, more aptly, the glasswork \u2014 for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4409,4478,4479,4017,4480],"class_list":["post-17175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-aliens","tag-data-storage","tag-golden-record","tag-microsoft","tag-project-silica"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}