Scientists create storage technology able to preserve recorded data for eternity, or 13.8 billion years

New developments in digital data storage yield an eternal optical disc capable of storing information for billions of years. Scientists from the University of South Hampton’s Optoelectronics Research Center (ORC) used femtosecond writing to encode and retrieve five dimensional (5D) digital data on nanostructured glass.

The result pushed storage capacity to an unprecedented disc capacity of 360 TB with a thermal stability up to 1,000°C and a lifetime up to 13.8 billion years at 190°C. This is a dramatic up-scaling from the team’s first 2013 experiment which recorded a 300 kB digital text file in 5D. It could allow organizations devoted to archiving data—museums, national archives, and libraries—the means of forever preserving their content.

Already the scientists used the technique to eternally preserve great works from human history such as the Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Newton’s Opticks, Magna Carta and Kings James Bible, and even presented a copy of the UDHR to UNESCO during the International year of Light closing ceremony.

To record the documents the team required a femtosecond laser—an ultrafast laser with 10⁻¹⁵  pulses per second—to produce short and intense pulses of light on three layers of nanostructured dots placed a five micrometer intervals within fused quartz. This results in the creation of self-assembled nanostructures within quartz which encode the information in five dimensions—the size, orientation, and the three dimensional position of the structures.

Essentially, the nanostructure change the way light travels through the glass, modifying the polarization of light in such a way that can be read by combining an optical microscope and a polariser.

Professor Peter Kazansky, from the ORC , states: “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 team will present their findings on Wednesday, February 17 at SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering Conference, in San Francisco. An accompanying paper will follow.

Source: Southhampton.ac.uk