Key Takeaways
- Researchers turned fictional crystal technology into reality with crystals that store data for billions of years.
- 5D crystals store data in dimensions including nanostructures, boasting 360TB capacity on a coin-sized glass disc.
- Endless possibilities include archiving human knowledge and resurrection of extinct species, tackling current fragile data storage.
If you’ve seen just about any Superman movie, you’ll know that Superman’s people, the Kryptonians, make heavy use of crystals in their fictional technology. Including the storage of memories and even entire minds within them. When the writers first conceived of this idea, it seemed like mystical sci-fi hand-waving, but now it’s essentially real.
From Comics to Reality
Researchers at the University of Southampton have turned it into reality. Using a special type of laser, scientists have etched the entire human genome onto a tiny quartz disc in a way that can last billions of years, even under extreme conditions.
These crystals can withstand temperatures up to 1,000 degrees Celsius and cosmic radiation, making them nearly indestructible. This breakthrough means data storage that could outlive humanity and even Earth itself! I’m going to have to update the best ways to store data for centuries. It also occurs to me that this could be a way to combat the threat of AI corrupting historical information.
How 5D Crystals Work
So, what exactly is “5D”? It sounds futuristic, but it refers to the five dimensions used to store data in these crystals. The first three dimensions are spatial—just like the way we think about height, width, and depth. The other two dimensions come from the polarization and intensity of the laser used to etch data into the glass.
When you add all of these dimensions together, the result is incredible data density. How dense? How about 360TB of data on a glass disc the size of a coin! The crystal works by encoding information in tiny nanostructures, which are then read by shining polarized light through the glass, revealing the stored data.
The Possibilities Are Endless
Storing the entire human genome is a neat trick, but I can’t help but get excited by the possibilities. You could fit 7200 50GB Blu-rays on a disc like this. It could mean permanently archiving all human knowledge in just a few crystals. This initial experiment to store genetic data might turn out to be more important than you might think. We can permanently store the genes of animals (including humans) now, and using future technology, bring extinct species back, or have precise data against which to compare changes in their genomes over time as they evolve.
As I mentioned before, it would be immensely useful to have permanent and near-indestructible copies of human knowledge in the sciences, culture, and history. It’s actually scary how precarious our current information storage is. It wouldn’t take much to “forget” how to make hi-tech devices, for example. We’re just one major catastrophe away from having to start over.
On a more mundane level, we have a real problem with a lack of physical media. We’re creating petabytes of data every year that only lives on cloud drives. This technology could give archival organizations a way to capture massive snapshots of all that data, and store it without the need for massive buildings filled with computer equipment.
When Can You Get One?
This is truly amazing tech, but what does it mean for storage technology at home? Well, the high-speed laser system you need to put the data into the crystal is incredibly complex and expensive. It’s unlikely that something like that could ever be suitable for home use. Reading these crystals on the other hand isn’t so far-fetched for, if not home use, places like libraries or universities. Reading the crystal basically requires a precise laser to be beamed into it,and a special optical sensor to read the data that appears on the other side, along, of course, with the software that has to decode it all.
What really intrigues me is a scaled-down version of this technology. I don’t need a 360TB crystal disc, but a 10TB disc that’s basically going to last forever? That has plenty of appeal, and it wouldn’t need the insanely tiny scale and level of precision as the current experimental model. Either way, to me this is just another sign that the death of physical media has been declared far too soon, and I can’t want to see what new storage technology develops from this discovery.
