I was intrigued recently reading a relevant blog post by Stephen Wolfram that made me think a lot more about this topic. Here is the link for those interested:
The most fascinating part of all this for me is the way Musk thinks "past the sale". He, and others, are thinking about things like how the interplanetary internet would work while we are all still bound to earth. I want to do more of this type of thinking that focuses not on if but when.
The '5D' comes from the size and the orientation of the bits that get fused together deep in the glass.
The original 3D printing in glass came out of Russia, so it is interesting that this '5D' science is kind of Russian.
I think that with 3D laser printing in glass there was always a problem of 'what use is this?' and I am wondering if that quest resulted in the Asimov ideas and the pitch to SpaceX etc.
I do not think that it is at all obvious that 'size' and 'orientation' matter to our binary trained brains, so making a machine capable of reading the disc and then reading it and then getting the schema right is a bit of an ask.
The HotWheels toy car with Spaceman is the merch they need to be selling to get donations for this.
> The information encoding is realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructures.
I still think this is a bit disingenuous, it is a three-dimensional encoding. Would people consider a colour photograph as encoding four dimensional information when its pixels are represented as (x, y, brightness, colour) for example? How many dimensions does writing have?
"Would people consider a colour photograph as encoding four dimensional information when its pixels are represented as (x, y, brightness, colour) for example?"
Actually, yes, they do. Computer vision people will envision a photograph as containing the number of dimensions equal to the number of independent numbers used to describe it, so a 1000x1000 RGB image would be considered 3,000,000-dimensional. This is perfectly routine in that world.
Writing would be considered n-dimensional. http://www.mathwords.com/n/n_dimensions.htm In non-math terms you'd probably be justified in saying the question is ill-defined, as what constitutes an orthogonal vector component in a piece of writing is not something that has an universally-obvious answer. But it's not that there are 0 possibilities, it is that there is very many.
In a nutshell, the word "dimension" does not simply describe 3-dimensional space, and all other uses are somehow wrong. Dimension applies to any independent element of a vector, and using it to describe spacetime is a tiny, tiny subset of the valid uses of the term. Another very common example is that describing the movement of a free floating in space rigid body is a twelve dimensional value; you need to describe x, y, and z (or equivalant), you need to describe the rotation around x, y, and z, and then you need to describe the velocity of each of those components. That's 12 dimensions. In fact, it's 12 dreadfully mundane dimensions.
Incidentally, not included in valid uses of the term is the sci-fi sense of the term; "parallel dimension" is an oxymoron as it expands to "parallel perpendicular measurement", and "alternate dimension", especially with the idea that it is somehow "like" ours but just slightly different, is just a common scifi trope that is gibberish in real terms. I'd say that if one's concept of dimension isn't, as I said, "dreadfully mundane", it's not set up correctly. It's really a boring term; all the ways in which sci-fi makes it sound exciting or mysterious are not part of the real term.
If you'd like to recover some of the sense of wonder associated with the term, I'd recommend learning about what it means to have a fractional dimension, in real mathematics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB9n2gHsHN4
In Machining, it is common to refer to that as 5 dimensions. I.e. a machine would be controlled on:
X = Left to right
Y = front to back
Z = up and down
a = axial rotation (yaw)
b = radial rotation (pitch)
The names and setups can differ on different machines, but this is the common setup because it influences how to physically manipulate a part relative to a machine in order to make it.
"Dimensions" as frequently reported on popular press tend to relate to tensors (vectors in ... well ... more than three dimensions) and arrays used to represent them.
The dimensions aren't of 3-space + time, but of values that are used for the encoding and reading of data. And in this case, there are five sets of values tracked for the data encoding. Hence, a five-dimensional array.
Chalk your dissatisfaction with this up to the lack of clarity in the reporting, not in the actual nature of the technology here. Words with multiple meanings, used (by the reporter) with deliberate imprecision.
> So what exactly do they mean by 5-dimensional? Traditionally, we think of our universe in terms of the 4 known and easily perceptible dimensions. The first 3 dimensions are our directions of movement or an XYZ axis; the 4th dimension is traditionally thought of as time. These 4 dimensions combined are referred to as spacetime. Unfortunately, this can cause quite a bit of confusion. The 5-dimensional discs made by the University of Southampton are not time traveling devices that can view parallel universes, but instead tiny patterns printed on 3 layers within the discs. Depending on the angle they are viewed from, these patterns can look completely different. This may sound like science fiction, but it's basically a really fancy optical illusion. In this case, the 5 dimensions inside of the discs are the size and orientation in relation to the 3-dimensional position of the nanostructures. The concept of being 5-dimensional means that one disc has several different images depending on the angle that one views it from, and the magnification of the microscope used to view it. Basically, each disc has multiple layers of micro and macro level images.
This is one piece of the puzzle certainly if man is going to look beyond Earth. If a Mars colony for instance was indeed established there would be some interesting data transfer and communication problems to work out in order to effectively transfer information and knowledge:
Mars at its closest is 58 million km (36 million miles) away from Earth. It varies though and can be as far as 100 million km (63 million miles).
That's about 192 seconds to 333 seconds of latency which an electromagnetic signal would have to traverse each way.
I can't dig up what the maximum permissable latency of a TCP based network is but I'd imagine 5 minutes exceeds it. Even if you created a network in which a 5 minute latency is acceptable your throughput would be ridiculously low.
There would likely have to be proxies and relays along the way to ensure acceptable performance but in itself the problem would require a lot of resources to effectively solve. I wonder if SpaceX is actively looking at offworld comms or if they hope organizations like Arch will attempt to solve it. Either way, an exciting time to be an engineer!
Wouldn't optical transmission (light) be much better? Both planets would have multiple satellites that would be the proxies between planets as one of them would always be able to "see" the others. Alignment would be tricky, but seems more promising with throughput.
It's even worse than that. The earth is 93 million miles from the sun (1 AU), so when Mars is on the opposite side of the sun it's at least 180 million miles away, with the sun in the way.
The numbers expressed by GP for how far Earth is from Mars is actually referring to how far Earth's orbit is from Mars' orbit, not the distance of the planets themselves at various positions in their orbits.
For normal internet use that doesn't need instant changes, caching relays would be pretty interesting. Kinda like how Netflix has servers at ISPs. So you would get "instant" access to things but it would be behind.
The Expanse (book/tv) does an interesting bit when talking with people as close as the moon. Talking over each other and stuff would be something that would we'd have to get used to.
It would be really cool if you could order disks like this, but with your own data. Especially if they directly encoded images that could be read with a microscope.
There are many use cases for reliable, long-term storage. This is why some places still use microfilms.
This could be a product by itself, and finance the whole enterprise.
Beyond the laser based digital layer there may also be layers that require the ability to detect and decode molecular, atomic scale or subatomic scale (quantum or holographic) information. We can already encode data in this way, but reading it requires very advanced technology.
They seem so clueless that even if I bought into the underlying mission of preserving data by sending it into space, I wouldn't trust this group to do it.
30 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 66.8 ms ] threadhttp://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2018/01/showing-off-to-the-un...
And its discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16269500
It involves shipping a lot of bugs so brace yourself.
https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-u...
So it is really a variation on the 'Bubblegram' 3D laser printing in glass:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bubblegram
The '5D' comes from the size and the orientation of the bits that get fused together deep in the glass.
The original 3D printing in glass came out of Russia, so it is interesting that this '5D' science is kind of Russian.
I think that with 3D laser printing in glass there was always a problem of 'what use is this?' and I am wondering if that quest resulted in the Asimov ideas and the pitch to SpaceX etc.
I do not think that it is at all obvious that 'size' and 'orientation' matter to our binary trained brains, so making a machine capable of reading the disc and then reading it and then getting the schema right is a bit of an ask.
The HotWheels toy car with Spaceman is the merch they need to be selling to get donations for this.
> The information encoding is realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructures.
I still think this is a bit disingenuous, it is a three-dimensional encoding. Would people consider a colour photograph as encoding four dimensional information when its pixels are represented as (x, y, brightness, colour) for example? How many dimensions does writing have?
Actually, yes, they do. Computer vision people will envision a photograph as containing the number of dimensions equal to the number of independent numbers used to describe it, so a 1000x1000 RGB image would be considered 3,000,000-dimensional. This is perfectly routine in that world.
Writing would be considered n-dimensional. http://www.mathwords.com/n/n_dimensions.htm In non-math terms you'd probably be justified in saying the question is ill-defined, as what constitutes an orthogonal vector component in a piece of writing is not something that has an universally-obvious answer. But it's not that there are 0 possibilities, it is that there is very many.
In a nutshell, the word "dimension" does not simply describe 3-dimensional space, and all other uses are somehow wrong. Dimension applies to any independent element of a vector, and using it to describe spacetime is a tiny, tiny subset of the valid uses of the term. Another very common example is that describing the movement of a free floating in space rigid body is a twelve dimensional value; you need to describe x, y, and z (or equivalant), you need to describe the rotation around x, y, and z, and then you need to describe the velocity of each of those components. That's 12 dimensions. In fact, it's 12 dreadfully mundane dimensions.
Incidentally, not included in valid uses of the term is the sci-fi sense of the term; "parallel dimension" is an oxymoron as it expands to "parallel perpendicular measurement", and "alternate dimension", especially with the idea that it is somehow "like" ours but just slightly different, is just a common scifi trope that is gibberish in real terms. I'd say that if one's concept of dimension isn't, as I said, "dreadfully mundane", it's not set up correctly. It's really a boring term; all the ways in which sci-fi makes it sound exciting or mysterious are not part of the real term.
If you'd like to recover some of the sense of wonder associated with the term, I'd recommend learning about what it means to have a fractional dimension, in real mathematics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB9n2gHsHN4
It would also be reasonable to model writing as infinite dimensional, since there is no maximum length string.
X = Left to right Y = front to back Z = up and down a = axial rotation (yaw) b = radial rotation (pitch)
The names and setups can differ on different machines, but this is the common setup because it influences how to physically manipulate a part relative to a machine in order to make it.
An example of this might look like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjzhygzafr0&t=9s
The dimensions aren't of 3-space + time, but of values that are used for the encoding and reading of data. And in this case, there are five sets of values tracked for the data encoding. Hence, a five-dimensional array.
Chalk your dissatisfaction with this up to the lack of clarity in the reporting, not in the actual nature of the technology here. Words with multiple meanings, used (by the reporter) with deliberate imprecision.
> So what exactly do they mean by 5-dimensional? Traditionally, we think of our universe in terms of the 4 known and easily perceptible dimensions. The first 3 dimensions are our directions of movement or an XYZ axis; the 4th dimension is traditionally thought of as time. These 4 dimensions combined are referred to as spacetime. Unfortunately, this can cause quite a bit of confusion. The 5-dimensional discs made by the University of Southampton are not time traveling devices that can view parallel universes, but instead tiny patterns printed on 3 layers within the discs. Depending on the angle they are viewed from, these patterns can look completely different. This may sound like science fiction, but it's basically a really fancy optical illusion. In this case, the 5 dimensions inside of the discs are the size and orientation in relation to the 3-dimensional position of the nanostructures. The concept of being 5-dimensional means that one disc has several different images depending on the angle that one views it from, and the magnification of the microscope used to view it. Basically, each disc has multiple layers of micro and macro level images.
https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/5d-data-storage-how-do...
Mars at its closest is 58 million km (36 million miles) away from Earth. It varies though and can be as far as 100 million km (63 million miles).
That's about 192 seconds to 333 seconds of latency which an electromagnetic signal would have to traverse each way.
I can't dig up what the maximum permissable latency of a TCP based network is but I'd imagine 5 minutes exceeds it. Even if you created a network in which a 5 minute latency is acceptable your throughput would be ridiculously low.
There would likely have to be proxies and relays along the way to ensure acceptable performance but in itself the problem would require a lot of resources to effectively solve. I wonder if SpaceX is actively looking at offworld comms or if they hope organizations like Arch will attempt to solve it. Either way, an exciting time to be an engineer!
But TCP maximum segment lifetime is 120 seconds.
It could get worse. Since at that point, the Sun is smack in between the earth and mars, so for a few days you can't get _any_ signal through.
You'd have to bounce it off some third satellite in solar orbit (like a triangle).
See https://space.stackexchange.com/a/18972
The numbers expressed by GP for how far Earth is from Mars is actually referring to how far Earth's orbit is from Mars' orbit, not the distance of the planets themselves at various positions in their orbits.
The Expanse (book/tv) does an interesting bit when talking with people as close as the moon. Talking over each other and stuff would be something that would we'd have to get used to.
Beyond the laser based digital layer there may also be layers that require the ability to detect and decode molecular, atomic scale or subatomic scale (quantum or holographic) information. We can already encode data in this way, but reading it requires very advanced technology.
They seem so clueless that even if I bought into the underlying mission of preserving data by sending it into space, I wouldn't trust this group to do it.