Communications of the ACM
5-D Data Storage Could Record the History of Humankind
Five-dimensional storage opens the door to eternal data archiving.
Credit: University of Southampton
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 (5-D) digital data by femtosecond laser writing. The storage allows unprecedented properties including 360 Terabytes/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 organizations 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 5-D data storage was recently presented to UNESCO by the ORC at the International Year of Light 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 micrometers (one millionth of a meter).
The self-assembled nanostructures change the way light travels through glass, modifying polarization 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 civilization: all we've learnt will not be forgotten."
The researchers describe their work in "5D Data Storage by Ultrafast Laser Writing in Glass," to be presented this week at SPIE Photonics West 2016, in San Francisco.
The team is looking for industry partners to further develop and commercialize the technology.
No entries found