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Science

CD-Eating Fungus Among Us 261

Posted by Hemos from the mmmm-aluminum dept.
dublin writes: "The Electronic telegraph reports that two years ago, the first confirmed case of a CD-eating fungus was confirmed in Belize. (Ah, the price of living in paradise...) The fungus eats the aluminum right out from between the polycarbonate layers (and apparently muches a little on those, too) leaving clear spots on the CD. Have fungi always been this mean and we're just figuring it out, or have we been invaded by super-fungi? " The article, to say the least, is a little short on details. But something like this surprises me not in the least.
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CD-eating Fungus Among Us More

CD-eating Fungus Among Us

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  • Re:Film (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Actually, I believe it was silverbased microfilm they found to be the safest format. The same kind that libraries use to store old newspaper artikles.

  • Breaking the nads... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "nad stone tablets.... are breakable"

    Ouch!

  • Check your map.

    Belize is in Central America, just southeast of Mexico. Not even close to South America.

    ---
  • Um, yes [guardian.co.uk]. Read up on it [google.com].

    - A.P.

    --
    Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?

  • Most CD's only have one polycarbonate layer below the aluminum. The aluminum itself is the label.
  • Steve Ballmer created the fungus that eats Windows licenses, but nobody's looked for their Windows license since it was released...
  • According to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo [elmundo.es], the fungus feeds on carbon and nitrogen from the polycarbonate layer and destroys the information recorded on the aluminium.

    There is a Flash graphic (but I haven't seen it).
    __
  • As my high school Biology teacher used to say:

    "Ehhhh... There are fungus among us..."
  • Just call it "assisting evolution." People that dumb, don't deserve to live...

    --
  • If you're copying data (not analogue) signals with ECC regularly, you replace the medium when it gets dodgy. Also, you have at least two copies in separate places as human error or disaster (fire, tornado, RIAA visit, Dubya makes being in possesion of your CD collection a hanging offence) might wipe out all media in one location together.

    Technology being what it is, though, you might have trouble getting an interface/drive that slow and klunky when refresh time comes around.

  • ...that you won't learn how to eat the case as well (and be renamed Elevenactin?) you naughty fungus, you...
  • Anyone know what kind of surface the Memorex "Black" CD-R's use? any different than aluminum?
  • Imagine if the growth of the fungi could be limited to the course of the track of the CD. It would be nice to inject such fungus inside the CD at one end and allow it to eat slowly the entire CD. Meanwhile you use the CD as a one time pad for an encryption channel. Your pal at the other end is equiped with a similar self-destructing disk.
  • The reflective layer is gold. You can read the catalog blurb here [tssphoto.com].
  • I have a bunch of Kodak gold CD-Rs. They didn't cost much more than the aluminum CD-Rs. Unfortunately, Kodak has stopped making them. Kodak now uses a silver/gold alloy in their Ultima CD-Rs.
  • I saw something like this a few years ago in Texas. I don't know if it was a fungus that did it, but a bunch of my audio CD's had clear spots in the Al. Ticked me off, especially since some of them were from garage bands that I will never be able to replace.
  • Laserdiscs (remember those?) suffer from what most people call "Laserdisc Rot". If you don't store them properly the surface degrades and the disc becomes unuseable. I wonder if it is similar to this.




  • Gold is used in recordable CD's. The gold in some of these is so thin that it's translucent. If you have one, hold it up to the light and see for yourself.

    Aluminium is used in pressed CD's because of obvious price considerations. The problem with aluminium is that it oxidises easily. Oxidisation of aluminium yields chemical energy, and this is why the fungus can digest it. Gold would be better because it doesn't tarnish in air.

    It's a good thing that hard disks use iron oxide. Because it's already oxidised, there's little chemical energy available for a hungry fungus or bacterium.
    --

  • Re:Film (Score:2)

    by Azog ( 20907 )
    Yes, but it will be illegal for you to access it. ;-)

    Meanwhile, Linus says that "real men don't make backups - they just put their source code out on the internet and let everyone mirror it".


    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
  • This wasn't fungi. This was just salt.

    It destroys aluminum with tremendous speed.

    While the aluminum is coated with laquer (and in some cases, lots of silk screen printing on top of that), it wouldn't take much of a pock mark in this laquer to allow salt-ladden moisture in. Once it's there, it will oxidize aluminum. Once the aluminum oxidizes, it will allow more salt and moisture within. The seawater might also have a detrimental effect on the laquer itself, exacerbating the issue, though this seems less likely.

    If you don't want them to disappear in this manner again, simply don't take them with you. At least, leave the store-bought titles at home and bring CD-R backups. Some Kodak blanks have an extra layer on top, claimed to enhance durability. Others are available coated with a white substance, intended for direct-to-disc inkjet printing (I had some Maxell discs of this description, a couple of years ago). All of these are somewhat more expensive than regular dime-store blanks. The priciest of them (around $US 3 each, it seems) probably being Apogee Digital's brand, which has what they call
    "DataSaver II" resin on top.

    Good luck.
  • It is really a shame, at times, that "Blatant Misinformation" is not included among the moderators' choices.

    That said, a CD (mass-produced, CD-R, -RW, whatever) starts out as a polycarbonate (the same stuff safety glasses are made from) disc, of familiar size. It contains microscopic grooves on the top surface - in the mass-produced case, this groove consists of binary pits, in the CD-R case, it's simply a spiral groove, with a bit of information about the disc (dye formulation, total time, whether it's been taxed for audio use, etc).

    Why is there a groove on a CD-R? Because the burner needs something to track - it, unlike a cutting stylus for LPs, or the mastering machine for CDs, does not have the ability to move unguided. (To the naysayers: the difference between 74- and 80-minute blanks is the width of this groove.)

    Moving right along. On a mass-produced CD, aluminum (or sometimes gold) is deposited by an evaporative process atop the aforementioned pits in the aforementioned polycarbonate, thus providing a reflective surface.

    A CD-R is first coated (probably sprayed) with a dye, and then that is aluminized (or plated in gold, or silver, or some other such thing - CD-R makers are all about hype, these days).

    A CD-ROM burner works by putting "holes" in this dye layer, thus providing an approximation of its mass-produced counterpart's physical pits, as the burned/unburned dye has different reflectivity than the aluminum.

    After all that, the disc is sprayed with a very thin layer of laquer. Nothing magic, no fancy plastic - just transparent air-dry laquer, like people have been using for a long, long time for all manner of things. On most discs, one can see a thin bead of this stuff on the outside edge, due to slight overspray.

    It is then silkscreened with UV-cured inks (to prevent the solvents in air-dry ink from dissolving the laquer, thus exposing aluminum to the atmosphere and allowing it to oxidize, ala 1980s Bit Rot), and sold.

    So. It's like this:

    Polycarbonate|Reflective media|Laquer|Artwork

    On a CD-R:

    Polycarbonate|Dye layer|Reflective media|Laquer|Artwork

    A laserdisc is built like a CD.

    A DVD is built like a CD.

    A DVD with multiple layers is built as follows:
    Polycarbonate|Partially reflective layer|Polycarbonate|More reflective layer|Laquer|Artwork

    A DVD with multiple layers and multiple sides, is built as above, but sans artwork and with four layers of polycarbonate and reflective media (two semi-transparent, two opaque).

    And for those who -still- just don't fucking understand how this bit of simple, decades-old technology is put together, I suggest you find a CD, a CD-R coaster, a sharp object, and a hammer. Take one apart and see for yourself.

    And, having done that, if anyone reading this still believes that a CD is constructed differently, they're full of shit. Which would be fine, if the same people wouldn't proclaim otherwise.

    For additional information on what a CD consists of and a really pretty animated GIF, start at http://www.disctronics.co.uk/cdref/cdbasics/cdbasi cs4.htm and read until your eyes bleed.
  • ...by the RIAA to force us all to upgrade to the next format they're going to distribute music on.

    I'm sure in 5 more years they will "discover" a fungus that eats that, too.

  • I saw this for this first time yesterday! I heard an audio cd I made for someone skipping, and took it out to dust it off. To my surprise, it looked like a small drop of liquid hit the outer part of the cd, and completely eroded the aluminum bits, leaving a little hue of blue in the middle but otherwise making the spot completely transparent. She's been getting into rare incense studies a lot lately, and I wonder if maybe that had something to do with it.
  • Wierd.

    While on Road Rules Latin America [roadrules.net], we spent about two and a half weeks in Belize, right on the Yellow River at the Lamani Outpost [global-travel.co.uk]. Shortly thereafter I noticed that my (blue?) CDRs started getting 'spots' and little by little they started sounding worse and worse, if they worked at all.

    Pinche Fungi...
  • Um...excuse me. CD-Rs don't have an aluminum layer.


    CD production tutorial:


    Mass produced CDs are made like LP were. A master 'die' is made that is used to press an image that becomes the copy. In the case of CDs, the image is pressed into some aluminum foil which is then covered with more plastic to protect it. LPs were just platic disks that were stamped directly. In both cases, the master 'dies' were/are precision machine parts that are VERY expensive to produce (but their cost are amortized over thousands or hundreds of thousands of parts)


    CDR work by having a laser burn a shiny substance sandwiched between two layers of plastic (Both sides are generally clear, but this is because it's cheaper to keep one type of plastic on hand.) When you burn the shiny stuff, it don't shine no mo'.


    The advantage of the press is that CDs can be produce at the rate of hundreds or thousands per hour, whereas an 8X burner still takes 10min or so to burn a CD full of data. The advantage of a CD burner is cost (of course).


    The point here is that if this was RIAA's plan, they have shot themselves in the foot. CDs that I've burn have no aluminum layer. One more reason to make my own CDs from Napster theft 8*)


    BTW, does this now mean that my computer can have a fungus problem as well as viruses? And if I have fungus, will Gold Bond help?

  • Ok, for video games, other software and MP3s, CDs are fine. But, for long-term, archival quality storage, CDs suck (and always have, regardless of fungi).

    Si, what makes sense?

    Actually, DVD-R makes something very interesting possible. Because there's so much storage available per disk: essentially a RAID array of DVDs. What I would do, is automate the whole thing like the old epic storage arrays.

    You would have a disk array (like the NetApp Filer), which takes your data to start, and then once you get above the threshold of one DVD-RAID filesystem, you migrate a snapshot out to a RAID-5 set of RAID-1 disk pairs. Thus, you have two DVD-Rs which can fail simultainiusly, and you still don't lose the volume. As soon as a disk fails, you re-create it from a pool of 4 or 5 disks, which you could replentish one a daily or weekly basis as the system informs you that you need to.

    Then, it's just a matter of running a periodic check of all of the disks to identify failures ASAP.

    Such a device is impervious to power failures (though obviously you need power to actually get the data back), most mundane environment problems (hell, the disks could be soaked or smoke damaged, and just a little polishing should bring them right back to new).

    Thoughts?

    --
    Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
  • a freak incident caused by extreme weather conditions

    Sure, that's the line that everyone uses. Challenger [nasa.gov], Ford Explorers [ford.com], anything goes wrong, they blame the weather [weather.com]. I don't believe it. It's a conspiracy involving the manufacturers, the RIAA, the MPAA, and Big Oil.

  • Of course, that's gunna cost you..
  • In other words, if you live in South Florida, you're screwed.
  • A CD eating fungus is rather disconcerting. I was told recently that the lifespan of a CD is about 50 years because the aluminum eventually oxidizes.

    Here is a partial list of archiving materials:

    CDs
    Books
    Stone Tablets
    Clay Tablets
    ROM
    Battery backed RAM
    Hard Disks
    Floppies

    Feel Free to add to the list and rank them according to durability.
  • Crossbreed this fungus with yeast...self rising CDs...3-D data storage, anyone?

    I can see movie producers having fun with variants of this too-the fungus could achieve sentience inside the AOL coaster warehouse, then die of overeating...

    Still bored at work...
  • First we get viruses...

    ...then we get worms...

    ...now we get fungus.

    Oh hell, might as well, we've already got litigation.

    "Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

  • Aha!

    So there's where the MIR fungi [slashdot.org] went... I was wondering where it would show up.

  • No, this isn't a good thing at all. The aluminum the fungus has "eaten" is still there--it's just reacted with other substances, presumably releasing energy, since that's how fungi work.

    All this means is that you'll need more energy to recover the aluminum from old CDs.

    If you want to recycle CDs, the easiest way to do it is (probably) to heat them to the plastic's melting point and then strain out the aluminum bits.

  • It is typically characterized by chains of slimy spores, often times with strong odors (they can stink).

    ... that fungi have First Posters too?

  • ...at least until a vinyl-eating super-fungus makes landfall.

    -carl

  • Life (Score:2)

    by magi ( 91730 )
    You can't control life. I mean, life will find a way. Oo and aah, that's how it starts, but later comes the running and the screaming.
  • I somehow get to keep bringing up the subject that I lived in Mexico for 2 years. I actually lived about 4 hours north of Belize... I lost plenty of CDs to this CD eating fungus. It's annoying as hell. I lost tons of software (including my favorite game while I was down there: Total Annihilation).

    I had maybe 150 music CDs and probably some 50+ computer related CDs and would imagine I lost somewhere in the vicinity of 20 CDs total, so maybe 10% of my CDs were killed by this horrible fungus.

    It does look kind of cool, though. It grows out in these little strings that look like tiny worms.

    It took me about 4 or 5 CDs before I realized it had to be some sort of fungus spurred on by the incredibly high humidity (I didn't have A/C and fungi are quite common down there).

  • That's the RIAA.
    --
  • The make gold CDs, but they are much more expensive.

    Silver perhaps?

    --

  • Great rhyme scheme. I'm impressed.
  • They make fantastic frisbees. Or, drop them onto your car antenna and watch the look on the cars behind you when they fly off and whack them on the windshield.
  • Or, perhaps, wallpaper one of your rooms. Use them as coasters. or sliders for furniture.

    microwave them.

    use them as wheels on tiny milk carton cars.

  • See, they designed this fungus so as to increase their sales. This fungus was released in conjunction with BMG's copy protected CD's.

    The conspiracy is simple. You buy a copy of Philip Boa's music. The fungus eats your CD and then you have to go and buy another copy.

    It's a brilliant plan!
    ========================
    63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
    ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
  • Ok, the Fish comes up with "Damned little fungi". While that's kinda amusing, is there anything else you'd like to share with those of us who didn't get it?


    --Fesh

  • I think this happened to me! I got clear holes in my first Final Fantasy 8 PC disc. It looked like someone had spilled some very mild acid on the disc or something, because it ate through the top of the cd, down to the aluminum layer, and stopped there. There was one little cluster of about a dozen holes in one area, and then another 4 or 5 on another part of the CD.

    The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
  • Yep.
    or have we been invaded by super-fungi
    It's a result of MIR and other Russian space-debris laden with super-fungi crashing into the Pacific Ocean. For more information about the Mir space fungus, click here [sightings.com].
    --

  • I have a CD collection, and this is news to me. In fact, I doubt that anyone I know was aware that their CDs may be lunch for a putrid fungus.

    How do you figure anyone with CDs will know about this?

    First, I meant scarey not scarely, maybe you thought I meant scarcely?

    At any rate, I meant that is is scarey -- ie, bad -- news for those of us with CD collections (although, as I say later, not a big deal). However, it is not surprising that such a fungus exists because metal-corroding fungi are well-known

    -- Robert
  • ...That's the sound of a thousand RIAA excutives mass ejaculating into their pants in orgiastic delight.

  • For those who are interested, here is a guide to storing and handling nitrate film [kodak.com]. The part that I like best is:

    You must handle unstable or deteriorated nitrate films much like you would explosives. Keep such films underwater in an open suitable steel drum until disposal can be arranged. Regard as unstable any substantial quantity of films, whatever their apparent condition.
    The newer stuff is much safer (although some say lower quality) than the good ol' nitrate films.
  • CDs do not have two layers of substrate. There is only one polycarbonate subsrate on a CD. It has aluminum and a laquer (sp?) on top of it. DVDs have two layers of substrate which results in a different thickness of each substrate and as a result a different focal point.

  • I remember reading a while back that someone was doing research on storing information in crystals using a laser that could burn piths into the crystal at different angles. Whatever happened to this technology?

    Also, what about flourescent optical? They were like CD's but you could see through them.

    --

  • >>But, isn't it your big RAID box that attracts them in the first place?

    You're catching on. RIAA Lawyers check in but they don't check out.
    ---
  • A few spores, carefully laid in the XP press...

  • Now, if I were more of a conspiracy theorist than I already am, I'd say that this was a bio-engineered fungus. But who would develop it, I hear you asking? (Well, one of you asked it, at least.) The US Government in their top secret Plum Island [arserrc.gov] research center (which has a biohazard rating two higher than the National Center for Disease Control!)? The NSA at Fort Meade? The Army biological weapons branch?

    Worse! The RIAA!

    Think about it. CD-Rs and CD-RWs are the demesne of music pir8s, and are a tool used for the theft of the property of the RIAA! Wouldn't it be great if the pirates had their tools eaten out from under them?

    So, what happens? RIAA immunizes their CD's against this fungus. RIAA agents release it into the environment in colleges and in major metropolitan centers (i.e. anywhere there's a Tower Records.) Before you know it, CD-Rs are being eaten all over the place, CD burners become useless overnight, and millions of gigabytes of data are irrevocably lost faster than you can say "US Government Approved Methods for Destroying Media Containing Classified Data!"

    It's a conspiracy, I tell you, a conspiracy!!

    Ahem... uhm, that is, if I was any more of a conspiracy theorist than I already am. =)

    ---
    Chief Technician, Helpdesk at the End of the World

  • We at Microsoft in order to protect our new license agreements for WindowsXP, needed to fund this new species of fungii to make sure all the bussinesses who use our software repurchased, oops I mean were license compliant with our renting scheme. Basically this new fungii species will ensure a constant revinue oops I mean innovation stream to everybody. Think about it? No need to worry about licensing. Your cd's will just be worthless so you do not need to worry. Its just our way of saying thank you for buying Microsoft software.

    After all, I do not make enough money.

    I blew 10 billion in the early 1990's with bio-tech investing and need instant return on my investments. With renting and a likely appeal with both the rambus and Microsoft cases, expect better innovation and new products to the market.

    WHo knows maybe you will even use your computer to comminicate messages in real time with audio video and use it as a pager. Now when I am through inventing instant messaging, like I did with object oriented programing and the internet, you will have proof that we are good and the government is bad.

  • Pinche Fungi...
    I read all the jokes posted to this story, and _this_ is the one that had me laughing out loud?? I need to get out more.

    Latin American Wisdom at its best...

    Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
  • coming from the cd manufacturing industry, I have the following comment: The alu-layer on a cd is covered with a lacquer to prevent any oxidizing or "fungi-attack". This layer could be of lousy quality (too thin) but more likely, it could be wrong applied in the manufacturing process. It is applied using spinning chucks. it's layer-thickness depends on spinning speed, accelaration and time. Since the lacquer is dispenced from the inner diameter, it is impossible to cover the cd 100%. The inner most area, close to the innerhole, is not covered, since it has to be hold by a chuck-pin to center the cd for the application of the laquer. Therefore, any cd, which has an alu layer which covers the entire cd upto the innerhole, does not have protection on the aluminium for 100%. The outside air can reach the alu-layer easy! Usually on the outside, there is a small area of uncovered poly carbonate and with the lacquer application this should be 100% covered with the transparant lacquer. Some manufactures however, like to speed up their production times by "tuning" their process as short as possible. It is possible that they cut the spinning time too much and leave some outside area uncovered. Your cd will not reach the 10 years with that! An easy check can be done by inspecting the cd's 1.2mm side. If the cd has 90 degree edge on the outside diameter, a wave-form of lacquer can be seen. The "rounded" outer-diameters are difficult to inspect. Further more, this lacquer is dryed (cured) by uv light (these days in some 1.5 seconds). The UV-lamps doing this job have only about 1000 hours of effective UV-light available. Some reluctant manufactures leave the lamps in too long and that makes the lacquer layer of lousy quality as well. DVD's are less much less of a problem since the reflective layer lies deep within the polcarbonate it self.
  • yes, but film is highly succeptable to heat/fire damage...plus, if your album is one of the old ones with the temporary glue in it, your pictures already have a death warrant...
  • While in the tropics, I learned to keep the data dry. Keep it in a metal gasketed box (army navy surplus stuff is great) and keep lots of silica gel recharged. Plastic baggies do not seal well enough to keep out the humidity for long periods of time. Silica Gel is avaliable in large packages that can be reactivated in the oven. Use an indicator and recharge the gel anytime the humidity gets over 20%. I did this for my tools, test equipment, backup tapes, and important papers. They all survived while most everything else mildewed, coroded, or warped. Do not use the tiny packets that come in products. They can not repeatidly dry the air in a container each time you open it to retrieve something. They are only good to keep something from rusting on the boat trip to the market. Get the big bag.
  • goddammit.......you guys are taking this way too seriously....i was just trying to be funny
  • There's some really nasty fungus out there (not sure of the sepcies, and I'm not interested enough to look it up) that eats the glass on lenses. Cameras are usually stored in dark, cool places, which are perfect for fungi to go to town. I wouldn't worry about CDs too much, especially in the US, unless you keep them in a cool, damp, dark closet. And even then.

    Besides, keeping CDs in an archival setting would probably keep this fungus from doing anything to them. Of course, printing *really* important things is a good idea too. Or writing them out on acid free paper with archival inks.
  • RIAA releases genetic mutation of cd-eating fungus to destroy music on CD-RWs. The RIAA has promoted the use of copy- and fungi-protection mechanisms on CDs to ensure their legal use. When fearful a city has any pirate CDs, the RIAA releases their anti-copi-fungi into the population.

    In a related story, the FCC has released its own mutation of the cd-eating fungus to eat "inappropriate" words out of music. Rapper Eminem is complaining that fans can only buy his clear CDs.

    ---
  • This is one thing that I can see spreading worldwide, left unchecked. The thing is though, that now, in addition to having them in the fire-proof box, to keep my pr0n collection in good shape, I'll need to disenfect?
  • If a fungus is tough enough to eat a CD, imagine what it could do to disks, tapes, film, or paper. You just can't store the CD in a non-air-conditioned or humidity-controlled environment in the tropics, at least until something mutates to take better advantage of the new "food" source. But expect anything like that to work it's way up the chain and eat all floppies, tapes, hard copy, microfilm, and electronic circuit boards first. (BTW, in tropical climates, fungus _will_ eat the circuit boards unless extraordinary measures are taken to protect them.)
  • My best friend has a CD collection riddled with tiny spots, much of hismusic doesn't play any more. Couldn't have been exposire to sunlight, since he was in the Navy at the time of the degradation.

    Probably was due to the oxidation of the salt in sea water. My roommates my freshman year of college discovered about 6 months later that many of their CD's had these gaps in them after taking them with us to Daytona Beach. Oxidation has been a known CD killer since they were developed.

  • Best of all, however, is that I don't think we have to worry about it too much -- if at all, especially in the US.

    Not even in the hot and sticky regions of the US? Our weather outside right now is almost exactly like that being currently reported for Belize. The only difference is that we do have a temperate season; it fell on a Wednesday this year.

  • During a year and a half sailling trip, about a quarter of my CD's died from the mystery clear spots. The home burned blue ones seem especially susceptible, none of them survived. It may be a coincidence, but no spots formed on CD's with solid color labels, only on ones that are mostly shiney and have a few words on them. Until now I thought it was the metal rusting, from handling the CD's with wet and salty hands. Does anyone know a way to prevent this? Wipe the CD's down with "antibacterial" soap or Hibiclense or 409 every once in a while? It sucked to lose a lot of good music, especially since we weren't near civilization and there was no chance of replacing it.
  • ... Titanium is about as cheap as aluminum. Perhaps this would work.

    Great. That's all we need: breeding a super strain of TITANIUM eating fungus. Each of these fungizoids would have the strength of 10 ordinary aluminum-eating ones. And the old-fashioned cheese-eating fungus woudln't even have a chance.

    With hoards of titanium-clad killer mushrooms terrorizing the nation, we would need a real superhero to save us.

  • I doubt the interest of the fungus is to eat the aluminum on the CD. I figured the fungus is just crawling everywhere it wants. If you find fungus growing on the lens within your SLR camera you would notice that the sucker will grow anywhere even there is no food around. So the aluminum is just a victim because it is chemically active and it just react with the fungus contact with them.

  • Re:the cuplrits revealed (Score:3)

    by pergamon ( 4359 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @11:02AM (#143262) Homepage
    Hehe... Either that or they'll patent the fungus, then alter it so that it only eats CDRs.

  • Re:killing the fungus (Score:3)

    by FFFish ( 7567 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @11:55AM (#143263) Homepage
    I *dare* you to start an EMail spam warning everyone about this bad new danger to their music collections, and encouraging them to sanitize their CDs before it's too late!


    --

  • Here is a partial list of archiving materials:
    CDs
    Books
    Stone Tablets
    Clay Tablets
    ROM
    Battery backed RAM
    Hard Disks
    Floppies


    Feel Free to add to the list and rank them according to durability.

    No.

  • Re:Film (Score:3)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @11:58AM (#143265) Journal
    The trick is to embed your data within a blockbuster film, as the film industry will then preserve it and imprint it on each decade's preferred media.

  • Re:Film (Score:3)

    by great throwdini ( 118430 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @11:19AM (#143266)
    A group of archiving experts got together at some point (I'm not sure of the details) and decided that film is the safest archive format.

    Even assuming that magnetic tapes, organically decomposing CDRs and other digital storage media will last into the next century, can we count on having the legacy equipment to read them? That's the advantage of storing an image on pure celluloid.

    I doubt that this is a reasonable choice, given the level of activity related to film preservation (e.g., Film Preservation Society [filmpreservation.org]) ... celluloid is a very fragile medium, and the requirements for proper archiving are far more stringent that the requirements of media akin to CDs.

    The search is not only for a medium that *can* last for an extended period of time, but one that can do so with *simple* and *easily reproduced* archival procedures.

  • Re:Gold Platters (Score:3)

    by malfunct ( 120790 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @12:50PM (#143267) Homepage
    There is a bacteria capable of digesting gold as well. They experimented with its use as a more environmentally friendly way to extract gold from ore than arsenic and friends.

    The idea is you have the batceria eat all the gold, then you capture all the batceria and disolve the organic parts and what is left is just the gold.

  • Developed by the Record Companies.... (Score:3)

    by heldlikesound ( 132717 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @10:53AM (#143268) Homepage
    ...to destroy rewritable CD's only. Hmmm, sounds like a decent made-for-TV movie!

    Record Company:

    "Don't worry, your $25 triple-locked, biometrically secured Britney Spears disc probably won't be effected at all! And if it does, just buy another one!"

  • MIR (Score:3)

    by PopeAlien ( 164869 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @10:52AM (#143269) Homepage Journal
    Surely a direct result of bringing that MIR space-fungus down to earth.. I tried to warn you...

  • Re:A fungus that eats aluminum? (Score:3)

    by pizen ( 178182 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @10:58AM (#143270)
    >>Could this fungus, once isolated and brought under control, have applications in recycling?

    Sure, but the problem is that it probably grows when it eats (like most living things) and I think I've seen that horror flick.
    ---

  • Fungal Limerick (Score:3)

    by Art_XIV ( 249990 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @11:28AM (#143271) Journal

    A fungus who liked to eat CDs
    Made its way to a corp'rate PC
    the backups all fried
    and admins all cried
    mostly bitter 'bout lost MP3s

  • Re:Developed by the Record Companies.... (Score:3)

    by anon757 ( 265661 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @01:35PM (#143272)
    Oooh, I just had a completley off-topic, evil thought: New copy protection encodes CD's with your DNA & the new Britney Spears cd requires a sperm sample before you can listen to it!

  • Predictable, but... (Score:3)

    by markmoss ( 301064 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @01:19PM (#143273)
    If you put enough food out there, something will evolve to eat it. I just didn't expect it to happen so fast. And the form it takes is a little unusual, I was expecting something to eat the plastic itself. Aluminum can't be nutritious; theoretically you can get energy by oxidizing it, but existing lifeforms do not have the chemical pathways to use this, and the fungus must have other substances to grow. I'm guessing that the fungus eats the glue between the two layers of plastic, and the aluminum is just an innocent bystander. It may also have been primarily growing on something else (like the cardboard label on the case) and just reached down to the glue layer to get some trace element. If it is eating the glue, those gold disks probably won't fare any better, assuming they use the same glue -- the gold foil will still be there, but as the fungus eats the glue on one side and tries to push holes through to the other side I don't think the gold will stay flat and shiny enough to read. But a CD with a different glue would be safe for now, and it is quite likely that only a few spots in the tropic will have the combination of heat, humidity, and the right species of fungus spores to do this -- for now. In a century, we'll probably evolve something that eats the entire CD case and all, and to keep them safe you'll need either a humidity and temperature controlled room, or to bury them in a land-fill where almost nothing ever decomposes. 8-/

  • Let's turn it into a force for good. (Score:3)

    by OpenSourced ( 323149 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @11:54AM (#143274) Journal
    I'm sure that with some genetical tinkering, a type of fungus could be developed that reproduced at normal temperature/humidity. A little bit more of tinkering, and it could select and eat only CDs of Britney Spears. Uhmmm.

    --

  • same with salt. (Score:3)

    by ericxedge ( 461053 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @12:16PM (#143275)
    during this past winter i dropped a few burned cd's into a snowpile/puddle aka slush. and the street salt at through the cd.. xericx

  • killing the fungus (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 18, 2001 @10:59AM (#143276)
    You can kill the fungus (and prevent future growth) between the polycarbonate layers of your cd's by sticking them in the microwave for about 10 seconds. The quick blast does the job, just don't leave in much longer else el meltyo.

  • Just post it on Usenet (Score:4)

    by dsfox ( 2694 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @01:30PM (#143277) Homepage
    Let groups.google.com save it for you.

  • How much? (Score:4)

    by jmaltais ( 75472 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @10:52AM (#143278) Homepage
    Where could I pick some of this up? My basement is FULL of AOL CDs!!!

    ... I'd be fun to watch too ;)

  • Alternative materials? (Score:4)

    by Ryu2 ( 89645 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @10:56AM (#143279) Homepage Journal
    Does the fungus only target alumnium? If so, is it possible to make CDs out of materials other than aluminum? Perhaps some other (reasonably non-reactive) metal with similar reflectivity?

  • the true history... (Score:4)

    by unformed ( 225214 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @11:13AM (#143280)
    The fungi used to be part of a very secret cult. However, around 1998-1999, various corporations and government agencies learned of their addiction to polycarbonate layers, and decided they could turn a profit with them.

    People would think that the fungi would have become common around 1997 when America Online began distributing large quantities of cds; however, the fungi had no knowledge of this. It wasn't until 98-99 that, due to the high demand of cdrs, that the RIAA, in partnership with various CD manufacturing companies and the US Customs, began importing these little creatures, and spreading them around the country, hoping to reduce the lifespan of cds, and in essence, make more money.

    It's a conspiracy, I tell you, a conspiracy!

  • Re:A fungus that eats aluminum? (Score:4)

    by SeraphtheSilver ( 226793 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @01:36PM (#143281)
    Unfortunately, I don't think it could.

    The point in recycling aluminum isn't to 'destroy' the aluminum, but to reclaim it at a lower cost [thanks to whoever mentioned that earlier on another /. thread earlier today] than it takes to mine more bauxite (the ore we get aluminum from). If this fungus 'digests' aluminum, then the aluminum _must_ be reacted with another chemical (I'm guessing oxygen, though I'm not really sure) to produce the energy the fungus needs. That means that you'd have to spend even more energy to extract it than to simply mine more. Since the bauxite ore is aluminum oxide, then the same processes would probably be used.

    What all of that means is that using this fungus to extract the tiny sprinkles of aluminum on a CD aren't cost-efficient enough to make it worthwhile for recycling. It'd actually cost more (and almost certainly yield less) to use this method than to simply mine more aluminum ores.

    -SeraphtheSilver

  • A fungus that eats aluminum? (Score:5)

    by Have Blue ( 616 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @10:54AM (#143282) Homepage
    Could this fungus, once isolated and brought under control, have applications in recycling?

  • we knew this would happen when they said: (Score:5)

    by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @11:52AM (#143283) Homepage
    "cds last forever"

    People never forget:

    "people will never need more than 64k memory"
    "cell phones dont cause tumors"
    "the speed of e-business will make everyone inside the borders of the western world stinking rich"
    "napster is the future of music"

    I say we mandate that computer cases always be made with a block of wood to knock on, cause these prophecies are almost always wrong.

    garret

  • the geotrichum genus... (Score:5)

    by sagei ( 131421 ) <<gro.evolr> <ta> <evolr>> on Monday June 18, 2001 @10:58AM (#143284) Homepage

    the geotrichum genus is a filamentous fungi. It is typically characterized by chains of slimy spores, often times with strong odors (they can stink).

    It is not odd for this genus to corrode metal; gerotrichum is probably the most common type of fungi found in metal.

    Geotrichum candidum was once considered to be a contaminant on the surface of cheeses (it would naturally grow there). Now, however, because it grows so quick it is now used for the inoculation of surface mould to encourage ripening.

    While this is scarely news for anyone with a CD collection, it certainly is not surprising. Best of all, however, is that I don't think we have to worry about it too much -- if at all, especially in the US.

    -- Robert

  • At last... (Score:5)

    by andyh1978 ( 173377 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @10:52AM (#143285) Homepage
    ... something that actually likes AOL CDs.

    munch munch

  • Sponsor (Score:5)

    by pizen ( 178182 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @10:51AM (#143286)
    This article was brought to you by Tough-actin' Tenactin.
    ---

  • So... (Score:5)

    by B00yah ( 213676 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @10:53AM (#143287) Homepage
    Is there really a safe archive method anymore? CDs now get eaten by fungii, disks and tape are subject to magnetic erasure, paper/hardcopies can burn, nad stone tablets/true hardcopy are breakable...

  • Vinyl is the way to go! (Score:5)

    by pitabutter ( 234478 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @10:52AM (#143288) Homepage
    Back to lp's for all your data storage needs

  • the cuplrits revealed (Score:5)

    by tim_maroney ( 239442 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @10:55AM (#143289) Homepage
    It's the RIAA! The RIAA, I tell you! They're trying to recoup their Napster losses by forcing everyone to buy multiple copies of the same CD! Let's all boycott Metallica!

    Tim

    PS. All right, I admit that it might have been Steve Ballmer.

  • Fungus.. (Score:5)

    by triple_c ( 458836 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @10:56AM (#143290)
    The best part about this is if you eat it you see music....Its waaaay trippy man...

    +++

  • We already knew about the fungus.. (Score:5)

    by Gazelem ( 460580 ) on Monday June 18, 2001 @10:52AM (#143291)
    Except that the media has taken to calling them "boy bands".

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