Backups of the future

A small disc has been invented that can store up to 360 TB in very little space, for a period of time estimated in the billions of years.

Using a very intense pulsed laser that lasts a quadrillionth of a second, scientists were able to record data into a quartz glass disc in the form of the coordinates, size and orientation of tiny holes. Five pieces of information per hole, hence the name 5D optical storage.

Various human works have been encoded in these discs, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Magna Carta, the Bible and the writings of Isaac Newton.

This system, extremely resilient and high in storage capacity, but difficult and expensive to write and read, will not replace those used in today’s consumer electronics. Also because once incised, they cannot be modified.

They are rather to be used as emergency backups, given their longevity and ability to withstand temperatures of thousands of degrees.

Reading the disc with an optical microscope and a polarizer is easier than writing on it, so in the future this technology could find applications in libraries and archives where only reading information is necessary.