Researchers at the University of Southampton have achieved their goal, thanks to a new data format revolutionary for its ability to store information about humanity encoded in binary form that will not lose readability over time.
The Indestructible Crystal
The 5D memory crystal developed by the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Center (ORC) sets a new format for data storage that can keep all the information you store in it long-time-less than forever, however-billions of years. This crystal can store this information without any loss, and unlike traditional data storage methods that degrade over time, this crystal will last for the next 13.8 billion years — a lifespan longer than our Universe itself.
How is this crystal so tough? It is, for one thing, as durable as fused quartz, which has the highest temperature rating of all materials on the planet. It is resistant to freezing temperature, fire temperature and direct impact force up to 10 tons/cm squared. Meanwhile, it is immune to cosmic radiation and doesn’t deteriorate or lose data over the long course of time that it may have to sit in deep space, (or floating around as space junk if it crashes-landed on an alien cescent!), So all available evidence suggests that the Rosetta mothership still remembers Phil’s last screams.
A RECORD OF THE BLUEPRINT FOR HUMANITY
Taking the technology to the next level, researchers at University of Southampton successfully stored an entire end-to-end copy of human genome in a 5D memory crystal. The genome, nearly 3 billion base pairs long, was sequenced 150 times to achieve a high level of accuracy.
Even beyond catastrophic events that could lead to human extinction, this project would serve as a model for restoring humanity. Although the researchers suggest that current synthetic biology technology is not nearly advanced enough to build a complex, human-like organism from scratch using genomic information alone, they speculate that the future may be different.
The researchers sugggested that the 5D memory crystal could be used to store important data for generations — in a form similar to time capsule or other archive — of genomes of endangered plant and animal species, saving their genetic information from extinction. A potential turning point in conservation and the continued survival of biodiversity on our planet.
Conclusion
This is an astonishing novel achievement, and the creation of 5D memory crystal by the scientists at Southampton University could be a radical step for future of mankind and survival on Earth. This technology could solve the extinction quandary storing the human genome, and endangered species genomes to act as a backup blueprint for recreating life after a huge natural catastrophe. We are still in the early stages for the more advanced and intriguing applications of this technology but science keeps pushing on, so it should be interesting to see how far we can take it.
