Hi, not certain if this is best place to ask, but I’ve been trying to figure out what formats and media have the best chance of preserving stuff like films, music and alike for longer than a century. I’ve exploring a lot of apocalyptic stories as of late and a question that’s bugged me, if ridiculous considering the setting, is how media like films and music could possible survive if someone had made an effort to preserve them in a deep vault or alike. I know of efforts to preserve plant seeds and animal DNA, books are relatively easy as one can read books from centuries if the conditions were kept right and with care, as a movie buff I’m puzzled how we might save media in such disasters. Film reels and tapes are notoriously flammable and will degrade over time regardless (they found that out in the 80s). There’s a good reason we’ve lost 90% percent of silent films made prior to 1920 and 50% of sound movies made prior to the 50s. Obviously we could try digitally storing them but formats like DVDs and Blu Rays aren’t currently expected to last longer than a lifetime. I’m not tech savvy enough to know how long most hard drives will last (one study suggests running hard drives only last at best 7-ish years) and I’m already aware most converting formats digital media often results in the loss of data. Obviously if humanity is in such dire straights that we can’t keep up the continually renewing preservations methods then there are clearly more important things to worry about but I’m an odd sentiment that likes to think that keeping records and data of the past, those things and people live on and if everything we’ve created is lost, then that will be the true final death of humanity. (Apologies for the dramatics, brain is very tired and I’ve been pondering these questions for years) Love to hear some options if not at least direction to where I might find answers instead. (Part of me hopes it’s laserdisc just for the hilarity).
I just got a new Chest Freezer and before even plugging it in, when I open the door (top loading), there is a extremely strong chemical smell inside.
I put in a Air Quality Monitor and the VOC level shows 100 (which is the maximum limit on it).
Will the smell and the VOC go away over time (leaving the door open)
or do Freezers emit VOCs all the time?
The reason I put this in ask Sci/Tech is that I suspect that the answer has something to do with the chemical makeup of the plastic used in those cheap microwavable plastic bowls you get at the grocery store in a six-pack. Our dishwasher will dry every other kind of dish out in a couple of hours, but when we open the dishwasher up we invariably find that although all the other dishes are dry, there are droplets of water all over the microwavable plastic bowls.
This includes the small one-cup bowls you buy in a six pack, and the quart-size translucent bowls you buy one or two at a time. Opaque microwavable bowls get dry, but they appear to be made of a different plastic than the translucent ones. Goes for small opaque bowls and large ones, too.
The regular dishes dry thoroughly after a couple of hours of drying. The microwavable translucent bowls take at least a day, sometimes longer to get dry. We can shorten the drying time by removing the microwavable bowls from the dishwasher, shaking them vigorously over the sink to get the big droplets of them, and then putting them back in for another couple of hours to let the fine droplets evaporate.
Metal cutlery, ceramic bowls, metal pots, whatevs, they all dry at about the same rate. Except for translucent microwave bowls. This is clearly a mystery of the universe and solving it may redefine our understanding of physics, although the smart money def isn't going that way.
