In 2016, scientists at the University of Southampton developed a 5D memory crystal capable of storing up to 360 terabytes (TB) of data, with a shelf life of nearly 14 billion years. This technology, known as the "Superman memory crystal," offers significant potential for long-term data preservation and opens avenues in scientific, environmental, and historical archiving.
The 5D memory crystal, created by the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton, utilizes five dimensions to encode information. The term "5D" refers to two optical dimensions and three spatial coordinates inscribed within the crystal. Using ultra-fast lasers, data is written into nanostructured voids in the silica material, resulting in a highly durable and stable memory storage medium.
The human genome, which is the complete set of genetic instructions for a human being encoded in DNA, consists of approximately 3 billion base pairs organized into 23 pairs of chromosomes located in the nucleus of each cell. Although it is currently not feasible to synthetically recreate humans, plants, or animals from genetic data, progress in synthetic biology suggests that the preservation of genomes using 5D memory crystals could play a critical role in reviving extinct species in the future.
The 5D memory crystal is housed in the Memory of Mankind archive, a unique time capsule located within a salt cave in Hallstatt, Austria, designed to safeguard human history and knowledge for future generations. Data inscribed in the crystal is annotated with universal elements such as hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen, along with the four DNA bases: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. These annotations provide clear instructions for interpreting the genetic information stored.
However, accessing the data in 5D memory crystals requires specialized skills and advanced equipment, which may necessitate traditional methods for those aiming to restore the human race after an extinction event.
Constructed from fused quartz, the crystal is among the most chemically and thermally resilient materials known, capable of withstanding temperatures up to 1000°C, resisting impact forces of up to 10 tons per square centimeter, and remaining unaffected by cosmic radiation. Its durability and storage capacity earned it a Guinness World Record in 2014 for the most sustainable data storage material ever created.
Professor Peter Kazansky, the leader of the scientific team at the University of Southampton, stated, "We know from the work of others that genetic material of simple organisms can be synthesized and used in an existing cell to create a viable living specimen in a lab." He added, "The 5D memory crystal opens up possibilities for other researchers to build an everlasting repository of genomic information from which complex organisms like plants and animals might be restored should science in the future allow."