'Superman' Crystals Can Store Huge Amounts Of Data For Billions Of Years

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Researchers at the University of Southampton have said they have found a way of storing huge amounts of digital data on tiny glass data storage devices they have dubbed “superman crystals”.

The crystals resemble the memory crystals seen in the Superman movies. The technology is capable of surviving billions of years, the scientists said this week.

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CNN Money reports:

That’s a lot longer than your average computer hard drive.

Sadly, the human inventions don’t look like the glittering crystals that Superman uses to generate holograms of people from his home planet. Instead, they take the form of small glass discs that have already been used to store historic documents, like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Bible.

“This technology can secure the last evidence of our civilization: all we’ve learned will not be forgotten,” said Peter Kazansky, a professor at the university.

Each disc can hold up to 360 terabytes of data — the equivalent of 22,500 basic iPhones.

The wizardry involved is invisible to the human eye. The scientists use a sophisticated laser to encode the information into minuscule formations, known as nanostructures, inside fused quartz.

The structures alter the way light travels through the glass, allowing the data to be read by special optical devices.

The researchers call the data storage 5D, because the information is translated into five different dimensions of the nanostructures — their height, length, width, orientation and position.

The scientists from Southampton, who are presenting their research at an international conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, say they are looking for industry partners to further develop and commercialize the technology.