Scientists at the
University of Southampton have made a major step forward in the
development of digital data storage that is capable of surviving for
billions of years.
Using
nanostructured glass, scientists from the University’s
Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) have developed the recording
and retrieval processes of five dimensional (5D) digital data by
femtosecond laser writing.
The storage allows
unprecedented properties including 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal
stability up to 1,000°C and virtually unlimited lifetime at room
temperature (13.8 billion years at 190°C ) opening a new era of
eternal data archiving. As a very stable and safe form of portable
memory, the technology could be highly useful for organisations with
big archives, such as national archives, museums and libraries, to
preserve their information and records.
The technology was
first experimentally demonstrated in 2013 when a 300 kb digital copy
of a text file was successfully recorded in 5D.
Now, major
documents from human history such as Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (UDHR), Newton’s Opticks, Magna Carta and Kings James Bible,
have been saved as digital copies that could survive the human race.
A copy of the UDHR encoded to 5D data storage was recently presented
to UNESCO by the ORC at the International Year of Light (IYL) closing
ceremony in Mexico.
The documents were
recorded using ultrafast laser, producing extremely short and intense
pulses of light. The file is written in three layers of
nanostructured dots separated by five micrometres (one millionth of a
metre).
The self-assembled
nanostructures change the way light travels through glass, modifying
polarisation of light that can then be read by combination of optical
microscope and a polarizer, similar to that found in Polaroid
sunglasses.
Coined as the
‘Superman memory crystal’, as the glass memory has been compared
to the “memory crystals” used in the Superman films, the data is
recorded via self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz.
The information encoding is realized in five dimensions: the size and
orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these
nanostructures.
Professor Peter
Kazansky, from the ORC, says: “It is thrilling to think that we
have created the technology to preserve documents and information and
store it in space for future generations. This technology can secure
the last evidence of our civilisation: all we’ve learnt will not be
forgotten.” The disc has a life expectancy of around 13.8 billion
years. To put that in perspective, that’s tantamount to the age of
the universe.
While some form of
this will more than likely be developed designed for companies and
agencies that need massive data storage space its more than likely
will not reach the average consumer any time soon. The best the
average consumer will see is the the 20 TB hard drive promised by
some companies in or around 2020 as very few people have enough data
to come closs to filling even one disc.
This type of disc
would be fantastic to data archivists but that still doesn't change
the game. The information still has to be gathered but at least it
gives a glimmer of hope for information survival.
