'5D' discs can store data until well after the sun burns out
Researchers at the University of Southampton's Optical Research Center announced on Tuesday that they've perfected a technique that can record data in 5 dimensions and keep it safe for billions of years. The method etches data into a thermally stable disc using femtosecond laser bursts. The storage medium itself holds up to 360 TB per disc, can withstand temperatures up to 1000 degrees C and are estimated to last up to 13.8 billion years at room temperature without degrading.
The Southampton team originally demonstrated the technology back in 2013 though, at that point, they could only fit a 300kb test file onto a disc. In the three years since their first demonstration, they've essentially perfected the recording technique and have since recorded the entirety of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Newton's Opticks, Magna Carta and King James Bible....