"If I ever find forever, I will share it with you," sings Tim Fite on his song, "Forever". Well, in the quest for data storage superiority, a group of scientists from the University of South Hampton say they've found forever and they, too, would like to share it with you.
Led by professor Peter Kazansky at the university's Optoelectronics Research Center, the research team is developing a new type of nanostructured glass capable of storing data forever. Which begs the question:Forever? Forever ever? Forever ever?
To do so, the team altered the way light passes through glass by creating millimeter-sized devices called monolithic glass space-variant converters. Besides being a mouthful to say, these little devices, when imprinted on silicon glass, alter the polarization of laser light as it travels through the glass in short pulses. These pulses imprint tiny, 3-D pixel-like "voxels" into the glass.
As the glass is read by the laser, the voxels produce nanoscopic whirlpools of light, which are actually individual nuggets of data that can be written, erased and rewritten into the glass's molecular structure.
The researchers say this new method for microscopic data storage is 20 times cheaper and more compact than existing methods.
“Before this we had to use a spatial light modulator based on liquid crystal which cost about £20,000,” said Professor Peter Kazansky. “Instead we have just put a tiny device into the optical beam and we get the same result.”
The team published their findings in a paper for Applied Physics Letters.
“We have improved the quality and fabrication time and we have developed this five-dimensional memory, which means that data can be stored on the glass and last forever,” said lean researcher, Martynas Beresna, in a university press release. "No one has ever done this before."
