News 5D' memory crystal claims to store data for eternity — the human genome has already been crammed onto a single small crystal

[Admin]

5D memory crystals, named as such for degrees of freedom and not literal dimensions, can be used to store hundreds of terabytes of information on a medium that shouldn't ever die.

5D' memory crystal claims to store data for eternity — the human genome has already been crammed onto a single small crystal : Read more

 

[rluker5]

Looks like it could crack or chip if you dropped it.

 

[alchemy69]

I defy anyone to read this and not think of Christopher Reeve standing in the Fortress of Solitude.

 

[acadia11]

I call their bluff my phone screen can’t even make it off the table without a chip … hmmmm?

 

[8086]

This is the ultimate form of ID, carry this in your wallet to board a plane or buy some beer.

 

[Blastomonas]

I defy anyone to read this and not think of Christopher Reeve standing in the Fortress of Solitude.

I was thinking that this is the begining of Altered Carbon, rather than superman.

 

[Dementoss]

Is rather large, considering the cell nuclei containing the original copies of the genome, are around 6μm in diameter...

 

[bit_user]

With that said, it is important that we take a moment to explain that they did not invent two new dimensions of space and time for this 5D memory crystal.

Well, holograms are effectively 4D: each point (x, y) reflects back a different amount of light, depending on what angle you look at it from. That adds two more degrees of freedom. People sometimes refer to this as a lightfield, in the context of capture or playback.

 

[bit_user]

Is rather large, considering the cell nuclei containing the original copies of the genome, are around 6μm in diameter...

And that DNA is how durable, for how many years, and in what kind of environmental conditions? Keep in mind that you're talking about a single strand (not thousands or millions of copies) and it must survive intact, so mere fragments don't count.

Also, what's the fastest speed of sequencing DNA? Nature appears to have hit a wall on that, because the fastest-replicating organisms rely on pipelining to speed up cell divison. I think there's a pathogenic bacterium that pipelines up to 4-levels deep of DNA replication. That's a neat trick, but it only gives linear scaling and I don't think it's applicable to DNA sequencing.


BTW, the test any archival storage must meet to apply to a post-apocalyptic scenario, is the ability to be read via relatively simple (e.g. 1950's) technology. With a holographic crystal, maybe you can partly get around this by storing the lenses needed to read it, which a future civilization can use to build a reading device.

 

[sjkpublic]

Zardoz

 

[usertests]

Looks like it could crack or chip if you dropped it.

Dropping a hard drive isn't a good idea either. With proper protection, it could survive earthquakes or micrometeorites (they want to put libraries on these things and send them throughout the solar system).

The big problem is that nobody is thinking of putting a resilient new storage medium like this in the hands of the plebs. Make it widely available and cheap and people will archive all sorts of things for you, and there will be many drives available to read them. Even if it's not rewritable, the potential storage capacity is so high that you can dump near-duplicate data onto it without caring.

 

[Kondamin]

I defy anyone to read this and not think of Christopher Reeve standing in the Fortress of Solitude.

First thought was oh has it been 10 years already, which is about the time media needs to forget about the stuff and bring it up again.

Then isolinear rods from the Star Trek universe

 

[nightbird321]

Imagine a large crystal with all of mankind's data saved on it, discovered millions of years in the future by a caveman and used as the head of a hammer. "hey guys, look at my crafted Crystal Hammer +5"

 

[das_stig]

I'll take a dozen for my pron collection in 8K, anything in lower quality, is just not up to the job.

 

[BryanFRitt]

"which now gives us "5D" memory crystals that can record up to 360 terabytes of data on a 5-inch square"
The picture(s) makes it look like it's a _circle_ and not a _square_, as well as less than 5-inches in diameter. Also is it thicker/thinner than a standard disc? Doesn't look like there the standard hole in the middle, does it spin?

 

[Dementoss]

And that DNA is how durable, for how many years, and in what kind of environmental conditions?

Get over it, I made no comment with regard to durability, only the remarkable data density, that has been achieved by natural selection. Also, remember that a tiny cell nucleus holds two complete copies of the genome.

 

[Gururu]

Only good for so long as there is a place to protect it. Why can’t they print information into the dna of a cockroach or something?

 

[bit_user]

Imagine a large crystal with all of mankind's data saved on it, discovered millions of years in the future by a caveman and used as the head of a hammer. "hey guys, look at my crafted Crystal Hammer +5"

I heard some famous, ancient scrolls were partially consumed as fuel to start cooking fires by the guy who discovered them. I thought it was the Dead Sea Scrolls, but it must have been either some other find or perhaps the story was apocryphal.

Anyway, I think that argues for using something like crystal, which doesn't have a practical application. Unlike gold, you can't melt it down into anything useful. Maybe it gets incorporated as a jewel into some sort of crown or amulet, though.

 

[bit_user]

Only good for so long as there is a place to protect it.

There are some geologically stable rock formations that are billions of years old. This is where things like the seed vault are located.

Why can’t they print information into the dna of a cockroach or something?

Why would you expect that line of cockroaches to dominate? If you pollute their DNA with (from a practical standpoint) a bunch of garbage, it would probably be disadvantageous and that lineage would get out-competed and die off. Not to mention the role of mutations in corrupting your precious data.

Speaking of insect DNA, a fascinating bit of trivia I once heard is that beetles actually contain a few fragments of plant DNA which allows them to make enzymes that break down certain molecules that other insects and animals cannot. This could help explain why the Coleoptera order is the largest among insects (40%) and comprise 25% of all known animal species! That said, cockroaches belong to the Blattodea order, so they aren't beetles.

 

[rluker5]

I've had older cd players die already. So I have doubts there will be a lot of working Blu-ray players in 50 years, making my m-discs unreadable.
I've heard optane holds data for a long time so maybe that is an option if there are m.2 or pcie adapters th whatever the standard will be then?

 

[bit_user]

I've had older cd players die already. So I have doubts there will be a lot of working Blu-ray players in 50 years, making my m-discs unreadable.

Did you ever pop them open to see why? I once bought a belt-drive CD player. It never occurred to me the belt would dry out like a rubber band. Needless to say, it didn't work when I tried to use it a decade later. Fortunately, I think most optical disc players are direct drive.

As long as there are lots of optical discs out there, I think drives to read them will still be made.

I've heard optane holds data for a long time so maybe that is an option if there are m.2 or pcie adapters th whatever the standard will be then?

I was curious about this, since data retention is a general concern I have about SSDs and storage devices in general. From what I could find, it seems like Optane has lower retention periods than the NAND flash of the day. If you have a good source that says otherwise, I'd be interested in seeing it.

 

[Kondamin]

I've had older cd players die already. So I have doubts there will be a lot of working Blu-ray players in 50 years, making my m-discs unreadable.
I've heard optane holds data for a long time so maybe that is an option if there are m.2 or pcie adapters th whatever the standard will be then?

if the data is important move it across media when you move.
I have had to throw away an insane amount of money worth of cd's and dvd's as they were all rotten.

 

[Thomas Kenney]

Light of Other Days - Bob Shaw, 1966

 

[Notton]

The bigger issue with items on earth is getting buried under foliage and rubble.
If you've ever seen pressure washers uncovering sidewalks, think that, but a 1000 times worse.

 

[dimar]

I guess we can skip 8K movie format and go straight into 8000K