'5D' memory crystal claims to store data for eternity — the human genome has already been crammed onto a single small crystal

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Preserving humanity for a potential far-off future where we no longer exist in a medium immune to bit rot.

A photograph of a 5D memory crystal on which the entire human genome has been inscribed.
A photograph of a 5D memory crystal on which the entire human genome has been inscribed. (Image credit: Peter Kazansky via The Register)

On Saturday, researchers led by Peter Kazansky of the University of Southampton in the UK revealed that they successfully laser-inscribed the entirety of the human genome onto a "5D" memory crystal with the help of Helixworks Technologies. This move is the culmination of decades of research on laser-inscribing on transparent storage mediums stemming as far back as 1996, which now gives us "5D" memory crystals that can record up to 360 terabytes of data on a 5-inch square and, due to the high durability of the material, should last basically forever without any bit rot.

The 5D memory crystal, which is actually made of silica glass, holds a Guinness World Record for the most durable data storage material. It's noted as being able to withstand cosmic radiation, endure force of up to 10 tons per square centimeter, and even survive temperatures as hot as 1000 degrees Celsius. Using this storage medium to write the human genome, the team behind it believes they can provide "a blueprint to bring humanity back from extinction thousands, millions, or even billions of years into the future," thanks to its extreme durability and storage density.

Of course, the technology needed to clone humans or recreate humanity from the human genome alone does not exist yet. It may even never exist. But there could still be practical uses for storage technology like this on a larger scale, particularly if we hope to preserve most or all of the current digital age for future generations.

With that said, it is important that we take a moment to explain that they did not invent two new dimensions of space and time for this 5D memory crystal. The "D" in this context refers to degrees of freedom. As the official 5D memory crystal page explains, these crystals are actually built on existing 3D optical storage technologies with the addition of "birefringence," which allows for every single microscopic "pit" of data storage to store eight bits/a full byte of data instead of just a bit per pit. This is considered to add two extra degrees of freedom on top of the expected three spatial dimensions of freedom, which gives us the "5D" designation.

Christopher Harper
Christopher Harper
Contributing Writer

Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.

26 Comments Comment from the forums
  • rluker5
    Looks like it could crack or chip if you dropped it.
    Reply
  • alchemy69
    I defy anyone to read this and not think of Christopher Reeve standing in the Fortress of Solitude.
    Reply
  • acadia11
    I call their bluff my phone screen can’t even make it off the table without a chip … hmmmm?
    Reply
  • 8086
    This is the ultimate form of ID, carry this in your wallet to board a plane or buy some beer.
    Reply
  • Blastomonas
    alchemy69 said:
    I defy anyone to read this and not think of Christopher Reeve standing in the Fortress of Solitude.

    I was thinking that this is the begining of Altered Carbon, rather than superman.
    Reply
  • Dementoss
    Is rather large, considering the cell nuclei containing the original copies of the genome, are around 6μm in diameter...
    Reply
  • bit_user
    The article said:
    With that said, it is important that we take a moment to explain that they did not invent two new dimensions of space and time for this 5D memory crystal.
    Well, holograms are effectively 4D: each point (x, y) reflects back a different amount of light, depending on what angle you look at it from. That adds two more degrees of freedom. People sometimes refer to this as a lightfield, in the context of capture or playback.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Dementoss said:
    Is rather large, considering the cell nuclei containing the original copies of the genome, are around 6μm in diameter...
    And that DNA is how durable, for how many years, and in what kind of environmental conditions? Keep in mind that you're talking about a single strand (not thousands or millions of copies) and it must survive intact, so mere fragments don't count.

    Also, what's the fastest speed of sequencing DNA? Nature appears to have hit a wall on that, because the fastest-replicating organisms rely on pipelining to speed up cell divison. I think there's a pathogenic bacterium that pipelines up to 4-levels deep of DNA replication. That's a neat trick, but it only gives linear scaling and I don't think it's applicable to DNA sequencing.


    BTW, the test any archival storage must meet to apply to a post-apocalyptic scenario, is the ability to be read via relatively simple (e.g. 1950's) technology. With a holographic crystal, maybe you can partly get around this by storing the lenses needed to read it, which a future civilization can use to build a reading device.
    Reply
  • sjkpublic
    Zardoz
    Reply
  • usertests
    rluker5 said:
    Looks like it could crack or chip if you dropped it.
    Dropping a hard drive isn't a good idea either. With proper protection, it could survive earthquakes or micrometeorites (they want to put libraries on these things and send them throughout the solar system).

    The big problem is that nobody is thinking of putting a resilient new storage medium like this in the hands of the plebs. Make it widely available and cheap and people will archive all sorts of things for you, and there will be many drives available to read them. Even if it's not rewritable, the potential storage capacity is so high that you can dump near-duplicate data onto it without caring.
    Reply