Quartz discs used to store 360TB of data, for up to 14 billion years
Back when I was in school, the only way to transfer data from home was on a floppy disk. Sure, you might have a CD burner at home, but the discs were rather expensive. Floppies were fine, because the only things you'd really save were documents and some Clipart for your book report. The real downside to floppies is they were terrible at actually retaining data. But what if you had a way to store files that would last 14 billion years?
Researchers at Southampton University have been working on a method to store data on quartz, and it turns out that the crystal is a fantastic storage medium. The team has managed to stuff 360 terabytes of data onto a disc, which they believe should be readable for the next 14 billion years or so. If their calculations are correct, the data should outlive our planet by a fair amount, provided that the discs make their way outside of our solar system.
Of course, you aren't just going to strap a USB connector to a piece of quartz and start transferring files. In order to store data on the crystal discs, the researchers are using ultrafast laser pulses to create three layers of nanostructured dots. These dots sit a mere five microns above one another. You can see the laser in action, writing data to one of the discs, in the video below:
What's interesting though is that the researchers believe that this is a perfectly viable way for long-term data storage, since it can survive temperatures up to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, for around 13.8 billion years. The best part is that quartz is super abundant. It's actually the second-most-abundant mineral on the planet's crust. So it's not like we'll be running out of the stuff, if we start using it for long-term storage of important files.
The team has already stored various important works of literature on these discs. The works include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (seen in the header image) and the King James bible. They are currently working on finding partners to commercialize the process.