A black hole and a mountain of data
11.4.2019
Translation: Patrik Stainbrook
Yeah, science! There it is: at long last, the first ever picture of a black hole. Aside from that, a completely different detail from the press conference fascinated me.
While reading a Spiegel Online article, I stopped short:
What? By post?!
This is how the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) was set up: various telescopes around the globe worked together to create an enormous virtual telescope with a diameter of 8’000 kilometres. They all collected data. These mounds of data were then shipped from place to place. The quote doesn’t indicate the true extent of this data mountain, only mentioning Petabytes.
The value can instead be seen in this picture displaying the scientist responsible for compiling the image: 5’242’880 Gigabytes of data were collected by the telescopes all in all.
Let’s assume that an observatory at the South Pole collected 1 Petabyte of data. Let’s also assume there to be a Gigabyte pipeline from the South Pole to the Max-Planck Institute. 1 PB is 1’000’000’000 MB. 1 GBit/s is 125 MB per second. Transferring a single Petabyte of data between these locations would take 92.5 days.
This strategy of transporting data physically even has a name: Sneakernet.
Now it’s your turn
Want to beef up your NAS (German article by Martin Jud!) in order to save your own black hole data? No problem, get 656 WD Red 8 TB hard drives for the low low price of CHF 183’024.–
All in all, they weigh less than half a tonne and can be comfortably transported in this Hi-Tec van:
Aurel Stevens
Chief Editor
aurel.stevens@digitecgalaxus.chI'm the master tamer at the flea circus that is the editorial team, a nine-to-five writer and 24/7 dad. Technology, computers and hi-fi make me tick. On top of that, I’m a rain-or-shine cyclist and generally in a good mood.
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