“In the future, we might be able to save our history to a glass storage medium that could potentially outlive humankind,” Christopher MacManus reports for CNET. “The new type of memory also touts mind-blowing specifications, such as 360TB per disc data capacity and the ability to withstand extreme temperatures up to 1,832 Fahrenheit.”
“By harnessing the power of a speedy femtosecond laser, researchers successfully wrote and read 300KB of data to an everlasting medium that consists of self-assembled nanostructures within fused quartz,” MacManus reports. “Think of it as a real-life version of the memory crystals seen in the old ‘Superman’ movies.”
MacManus reports, “A team from University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Center and Eindhoven’s University of Technology took part in the storage breakthrough. The team was led by Jingyu Zhang.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The Voyagers are gonna be pissed.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “jeffrochin” for the heads up.]
You should iCal that to check if those data are still there in 1,000,2013…
I mean 1,002,013
No worries, Luc. The box it comes in and the instructions to read it won’t last a thousand years. Reminds me of Montgomery Scott holding up a computer mouse and saying, “How quaint.”
More to the point, in less than 20 years, no one will still be making devices capable of reading this disk.
File them with your 8″ floppies and 9 track data tapes.
This is the problem with digital today – no long term reliable large storage. Unless something is done about this many personal histories, photos, movies and the like will disappear. Managing this stuff is a pain now and when turned over to the next generation it’s doubtful the same care would be given to preserve it. I wish Apple would use some of it’s billions and come up with a permanent Time Capsule storage solution.
@Peterblood71
The Scientists all over the world realize that I am getting older and it is a race against the clock to save all of my personal history. I have faith that some kind of permanent memory solution will be found since the stakes have never been higher that my mark on history may be lost to future generations. Can you imagine a world with no record of my existence? I can’t. I think about me everyday 🙂
pete, already exists. buy one of these:
http://www.mdisc.com/
invented by mormons to save their genealogy data, but they will sell you one.
That’s just what the NSA needs for all those Twitter logs.
I hope it has better than a USB 2.0 connection.
We can store all Microsoft long list flops forever!
I’d like to hear what today’s cost was for the 300 KB in $ per GB. I’ll bet it’s pretty healthy
Yes, we could save human history. We’ll be long gone in a million years, but whatever thing unearths and reads the human narrative is in for a treat: a lurid spectacle of endless planetwide slaughter, engineered by beings insane from birth, primitive emotional creatures cursed with a vivid intelligence few could operate, or even tolerate, without a thick blanket of self-deception.
Or, the only thing that’ll be able to be viewed are LOLcats.
What else besides the Fandroid you describe?
Well, you’re just a sparkling ray of sunshine, aren’t you?
Yay! My school!
I just want the 360 TB capability on my desk connected through thunderbolt. This could be the one external storage for the new mac pro.
The Observers are going to be pissed.
Don’t we already have this technology – Facebook?