Eternal 5D data storage could record the history of humankind

digital data storage that is capable of surviving for billions of years

The storage allows unprecedented properties including 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to 1,000°C and virtually unlimited lifetime

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

phys.org

This is definitely an interesting development... Scientists have discovered a way to store data within crystals that could last for billions of years.
Reminds me of the whole 13 crystal skulls legend. I seem to remember reading somewhere that some people believed the skulls were a sort of information container.
What I'm really wondering though is if this discovery will translate over into standard computer technology. Will we be trading our mechanical hard drives and solid-state drives for crystals?

originally posted by: trollz
Will we be trading our mechanical hard drives and solid-state drives for crystals?

No. This is a read-only storage medium, meant for archival purposes. It is in no way comparable to HDDs or SSDs.

Overdevelopment is what I think.

originally posted by: AdmireTheDistance

originally posted by: trollz
Will we be trading our mechanical hard drives and solid-state drives for crystals?

No. This is a read-only storage medium, meant for archival purposes. It is in no way comparable to HDDs or SSDs.

Still very important, it solves one of the biggest problems with storage media, the lifespan.

Being able to read that data for billions of years is quite the feat.

originally posted by: trollz

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

phys.org

And the tax department. sheesh

Like 13 billion years... lol

We are now seeing things that can last a long time other than crap left on the moon.

a reply to: trollz


I'm learning to adjust to the claims of this kind of talk from developers and manufacturers. Supposedly, when CDs came out--coincidence?--it was said in the media that cassette tapes had a limited life space of not more than a decades. I have some that play decently that are forty years old. Oh, and at that same time period, we were told that CDs were virtually indestructible. That may be true of the physical disc itself, but certainly not the material recorded upon it.

"Now how did it get that scratch?"

a reply to: Aliensun

Actually those scratches are just in the plastic coating surrounding the actual media. Fill those scratches back in with a polymer and you're good to go.

As for the crystal storage - AWESOME! I'd like to have every photo and home video I've ever taken (currently triple backed-up on hard drives) when I die copied over into a crystal storage medium to be passed down in the family so that someday my Greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreat great Grandson, Bleerk548, can pop it in the crystal holoviewer on Planet BleepTreeg and show his own Grand cyborgs.

This is cool, but what if the people in the future can't read it?

We don't know what will happen... If there is ever a big huge war or something, so much information and knowledge will be lost. We already have lost knowledge, sometimes we learn it again, sometimes no.

Books are not permanent, but at least, all they need for reading is some eyes.

Maybe we should do old-school, carve things into stone.


Maybe I will carve my name into a cliffe or something, make future people think I was some great king...

Oh, one more thing with this... who will be the people who will actually record the information? And will this technology be shared so other countries can write their history also? Because this matters... like, I do not mean to be rude, but what if America goes forward and says to history "we won WWII" (just as example, of course other countries also manipulate history) and so the truth is forgotten to future people? If this technology is only exclusive to certain countries, only these countries will get to say their version of history. So the record is twisted.

a reply to: trollz

Jor-el!

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.

Good find!

340 TB.. I've got 16 GB on my phone

So the information can be stored for billions of years on these crystals? That's simply incredible!! What happens if you drop one while dusting it?