Ice could offer a way of storing messages long-term in cold environments
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Researchers have discovered a groundbreaking method of storing information in ice for millennia, by manipulating the formation of internal bubbles to encode messages in binary or Morse code.
Mengjie Song and his team at the Beijing Institute of Technology in China found that they could influence the size and shape of bubbles within ice by altering the freezing rate. By freezing layers of water between plastic sheets, they could create either egg-shaped or needle-shaped bubble layers, which could then be assigned to characters within Morse and binary codes.
The controlled freezing process resulted in ice formations that spelled out messages through the arrangement of internal bubbles. When converted into grayscale, the bubbles appeared white, while bubble-free areas appeared black, allowing a computer to decode the message based on bubble size and position.
While current technology limits the amount of information that can be stored in a standard ice cube, Song believes that manipulating bubbles in materials like plastics could offer new possibilities for long-term information storage in cold environments.
Aside from its novelty, Song emphasizes the practical applications of this research, particularly in preserving food with ozone or developing slow-release drug delivery systems. He also sees potential in using bubble manipulation to prevent ice formation on aircraft wings and studying bubble behavior in lunar environments.
However, Qiang Tang from the University of Sydney raises doubts about the real-world utility of this method, citing the reliability of traditional storage mediums like hard disks and paper for long-term information retention.
While the concept of encoding messages in ice may be intriguing, Tang questions its practicality from a security standpoint, suggesting that traditional backup methods are more secure. He humorously remarks, “I don’t think it will be useful at all unless a polar bear may want to tell someone something.”
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