Eternal memory

Publish date 27-04-2022

by Stefano Ravizza

There is never enough space on the hard disk, between photos, videos, documents the disk fills up in an instant. I remember when 720KB of floppy disks were enough. To accommodate this, Southampton researchers have created a glass disc that can hold up to 500 Terabytes of data via 5D optical data storage. This technique uses a nanostructured glass for permanent recording of digital information by laser writing. In addition to the three spatial dimensions, which allow you to position a point on the glass, there are two dimensions, which in fact are the expression of particular characteristics related to the laser, or rather how the laser works to draw the point (the shape of the wave) and to insert the information inside the nanostructures of the glass lattice. The disc actually has an eternal memory. the support remains stable and preserves information even at a temperature of 1,000 ° C .: data can survive and remain intact for billions of years… unless it falls on the ground!


Stefano Ravizza
NP January 2022

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