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SCIENTISTS at the University of Southampton have developed a digital storage method and medium capable of surviving for billions of years.
The basis of this storage is nanostructured glass, which the scientists can record and retrieve five-dimensional digital data by femtosecond laser writing.
The ultrafast laser produces extremely short and intense pulses of light. The file is written in three layers of nanostructured dots separated by five micrometres (one millionth of a metre).
The information encoded is realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation, plus the three dimensional position of the nanostructures.
Each glass disc can contain 360TB. But they are also very tough thermal with stability up to 1,000°C and virtually unlimited lifetime at room temperature (13.8 billion years at 190°C ).
Aa very stable and safe form of portable memory, the technology could be highly useful for organisations with big archives, such as national archives, museums and libraries, to preserve their information and records.