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I'm Kitty (and so can you!)
- she/her
Just a leopard from Seattle who sometimes makes games when she remembers to.
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in reply to @Spax's post:
casually writing down the fraction that represents the sum of ℝ - ℚ so i can describe to all my fellow alternate dimension humanoids what an irrational number is
Wait now I'm trying to work out what the maximum megabytes-per-millimeter would be given limitations like the planck length. Except the mark couldn't possibly be any finer than the space between atoms in the rod, so you can't even go down to the planck length? Is there a special material you could make that would minimize the gap between atoms so that your mark could pack as many megabytes per millimeter as possible
Well, you'd ideally want one big molecule, probably pretty linear to make reading easier. Things with low atomic number, ability form at least 3 bonds, and stable, tight bonds would be best. O-H and C-H have short bonds but hydrogen only really bonds to one thing, N-O is pretty short but things with too many N-O bonds tend to be explosives, but C-O is only slightly longer and pretty stable. Of course, you also want some sort of structure for this huge molecule, so that it's not just some tremendous fat chain...
...
I think you eventually invent DNA if you go down this route. Maybe fluorine-chemistry DNA.
Internet says you can get about 400MB of data per meter of DNA (uncoiled). I bet you can do better, but probably not much more than an order of magnitude better.
You could maybe do it with a sheet of graphene, and then you'd be able to have the mark in two dimensions, rather than one, allowing for greater precision in the encoding. You'd have to figure out how to affix an atom of something obviously not carbon (gold for style, or maybe replace a carbon with a silicon) to the sheet, but I'm sure the incredibly advanced Dr.Zeta could pull that off.
Then, all you have to do is roll up the sheet, and it should fit in the same space as the original metal rod.
If Dr. Zeta needs the tape to perform his computations, then at a certain point the problem becomes whether or not you could have enough tape to perform the computation. Wikipedia claims (without citation) that the Encyclopedia Britannica currently comprises 40 million words worth of information. Assuming two characters per centimeter and an average of five letters per word - I realize this assumption breaks down very quickly in practice, but we need to start somewhere - then Dr. Zeta would need 1,000 kilometers' worth of tape. That's a lot less than I was expecting he'd need, but it still seems like a cumbersome amount, assuming he doesn't have something to compress the hell out of that tape.
what a silly idea. the real way to do it is get your number N and write "10", which perfectly encodes the encyclopedia in base N
I would simply take a small piece of paper and draw a character from my UTF-3200000000-encoded character repertoire.
wait - the problem is the last digit, right? If your last digit(s) are zero, you lose those digits
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in reply to @Spax's post:
tbf you also need to remember the encoding for each character but it's still very impressive
i could do this, it's not very difficult. i just need a minute.
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