University of Southampton researchers have created tiny glass discs that are capable of storing up to 360-Teryabytes of five dimensional (5D) digital data. Even more impressive is the fact that each one of these discs can withstand temperatures up to 1,000°C, and can keep data intact for 13.8-billion-years at room temperature. Documents, like the Magna Carta, are recorded using ultra-fast laser, producing extremely short and intense pulses of light. The file is written in three layers of nano-structured dots separated by five micrometers. Continue reading for an up-close image of one of these discs.
“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 realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructures,” reports Twisted Sifter.
