[Leica] HIGHLY TECHNICAL QUESTION?

[hlritter at bex.net (Howard Ritter)]

Congratulations, Dr Ted! That is actually a very subtle and incisive  
question.
The answer is rooted in quantum mechanics, information theory, and the  
notion
that information, like matter and energy, is never destroyed. There  
was a prolonged
and passionate debate in the physics community on this question. It  
was feared
initially that when matter falls into a black hole, its information  
content is lost, to
the great consternation of many physicists. It seemed as egregious a  
violation of
fundamental physics as a violation of the conservation of energy. But  
clever
insights and analysis finally saved the day. Check out The Black Hole  
War by
Leonard Susskind, or at least James Trefil's Washington Post review of  
the book at
Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Hole-War-Stephen-Mechanics/dp/0316016411/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242872534&sr=8-1

So wherever the pixels go, in some fashion their information is never  
lost to the
universe?no matter how good your memory scrubber is! The question is,  
where
do the pixels go?oh, but that's what you asked, isn't it?

That's my circular explanation.

?howard

On May 20, 2009, at 9:57 PM, Richard Man wrote:

> It goes to the bit bucket in the heaven!
>
> The pixels are stored as a file in the media, so it goes wherever  
> files go
> when you delete a file. In practical terms, under Windows, normally  
> the
> files go to the Recycling Bin so you can rescue them if needed  
> unless you
> empty the Recycling Bin. When that happens, the disk space used by  
> the file
> may be used by the system for the other files, but at the system  
> level, the
> file is stored in multiple locations and it's possible to recover  
> portion of
> the file even if the system reclaims and file and uses the storage  
> space.
>
> There are methods to more permanently delete a file involving actively
> modifying all the data that the file. In the extreme case, one could  
> destroy
> the drive by removing the platters and pound it into bits...
>
> Does this help?
>
> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 6:42 PM, TED GRANT <tedgrant at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> I have just been asked a technical question and require an exact  
>> answer if
>> possible.
>> "WHERE DO THE PIXELS GO WHEN YOU DELETE A PICTURE?"
>> Dr. ted