we can still put that photo of hillary in a furnace and watch it melt...right?...RIGHT?!?

I hate to break it to 'em, but they already have this at epcot. Only the photo quality sucks, and doesn't last as long... DAMN YOU KOREANS!!!

Do we want people, 20,000 years from now, to know that Hillary Clinton existed? I don't think so.

Cool technology, but this is just a bad idea. Companies are talking about "going green" now, and what is this? The world's least-disposable item? Hell yeah it is.

Why not just use a laser to engrave it with the image?

You can always melt those metal photos down, right?

Thats pretty cool. Imagine thousands of years into the future your relatives/genetic pool will be able to see you, and see how ugly you are/were.
~[www.zixpk.com]

After watching 'Life After People' on Discovery, this cheers me up that something of our civilization will survive the great extinction after the impending ocean mentane explosion (I have to stop watching 'Mega Disasters')

Am I the only one a little confused? Where's the image?

Finally, a way for Bob Dole to preserve his baby photos.

The Long Now Foundation ([www.longnow.org]) has a similar technology concept for preserving human languages, using an etched disk:

[www.rosettaproject.org]

Silly Gizmodo and @bnsqueak: These things are made of metal -- they may not "biodegrade" easily, but they can likely be recycled without much trouble. I'd also imagine that the 20,000 years they're talking about anyway is with regard to fading. Underground or in warm salty water, I'd imagine most metals other than gold will corrode away before too long...

On the other hand, I just learned the real horrors of freaking plastic. Did you know that unless your plastic items are labeled (in that little arrow/triangle "recycle" logo) with a 1 or 2, they probably can't and won't be recycled? And plastic does not biodegrade...it just breaks into smaller and smaller pieces of the exact same material, staying in the environment forever.

The company name's not "Wonyun" but Wooyoun and they've been in the exact business for years now.

@EQC: They didn't mention it in the article, but that is why you have get these pictures laminated with clear plasticity goodness.

Porn For 20,000 FTW!

@DJJS: you're on the internet - I think it would take 20,000 years just to watch all of it (if you could stop it from being produced).

Anyone know how much porn is accessible on the internet right now?

Meh, call me when you've got a color photograph that'll last 20,000 years.

Photographs that look like crap.

now if they can only get the whole "spacinginbetweenwords" thing down it would be complete

With any luck, after a failed campaign Hillary will fade into obscurity and be completely forgotten and out of our collective lives within a couple years not thousands!

So what's special about chemically etching a metal plate?

@EQC: Those plastics can be recycled, but there is typically little market for them, so it isn't done.

Hmmm. I guess these photos will last about as long as platinum prints, a technology that's been around for a hundred years already.

@daaniel: Thanks, updated.

McCain = Bush the 3rd. I wouldnt want either of their images to last 20,000 years.

Will they survive the five minute war of 2132?

No kidding - nothing new here - ever seen how offset printing works?

Gee, lets re-invent the tin type.

This is very old news. The photoceramic process was invented in 1855 and has been used on tombstones since that date all over Europe. In recent years the process has been adapted to color photography.

35,000 year old vitrified objects have been found in caves so it is not unreasonable to expect photoceramics to last that long. The site photoconservation dot com has an article on this process.