A Home-Made Power Supply that Lasts 1000 Years?

x_man asks: "This may sound a little strange but I've accumulated a lot of cool stuff throughout my life. Add to that my parent's stuff, my wife's stuff, and all of the other cool stuff I plan to accumulate before I die, and you have a lot of stuff. The problem is what to do with all of this stuff when I die. My descendants will want a few bits, but I can't bear the thought of my 1000+ collection of sci-fi books being scattered to the Goodwill winds. Therefore, I've decided to entomb my stuff. It will all go into an airtight stainless steel shipping container and be buried on a family plot for a 1000 years or so. I will have the ultimate geek time capsule, but there is one problem. Let's say you want to broadcast some sort of locator beacon in a 1000 years. How do you construct a reliable power supply that will last at least 1000 years or more? There's also the question of how to signal future generations. I'm thinking some sort of VLF for ground penetration."

You need two power supplies

[pclminion]

The first power supply is only required to run a clock for 1000 years. After that time, it will activate the "real" power supply which will broadcast the beacon.

This way, you don't have to design a power supply which is capable of lasting 1000 years AND giving a reasonably big power output.

radioisotope generator

[dario_moreno]

like in the space probes and spy satellites. Coupled to a thermoelectric couple, you can get 500 W of power on a quite long time with no moving parts. Voyager and Pioneer have been using this in deep space for more than 20 years, it should work if the half life of the material is well chosen (Pu, U-235 or C-60). Not easy to find however of you don't have Libyan terrorists among your friends like in Back to the Future...

I think you need to...

[osmin626]

get a life, dude.

Assuming this isn't April Fools, go on out and get a life, ANY LIFE, instead of planning for your death.

Sure, having a will, living or otherwise, is fine, but this?

Besides, no one's going to give two bits about all your stuff in one thousand years.

And I gotta wonder just who the locator beacon is for. Aside from archaeologists, who would really want to locate all your crap?

When is this to occur?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Therefore, I've decided to entomb my stuff.

Please, let us know the date and place of your entombment. A group of us will show up the following day, dig up your stainless steel time capsule, cast your precious 'stuff' to the 4 winds and various charities (of our choosing), all the while merrily chanting "You thought you could take it with you! HA HA. April Fool!"

Don't need power

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget the complexities of a long-life power supply or locator beacon. Keep it simple, like our ancient ancestors did. Just put up a tall rock monument marking the place. Even if there's significant change on the surface due to erosion, weather, construction, etc. the monument itself should still be easy to find to future archaelogists. Be sure to engrave it in several languages though.