SpaceX vs 3rd Space vs Isaac Asimov

A galactic timescale challenge

This “Superman memory crystal” was developed by the lab of Professor Peter Kazansky — the inventor of “5D” optical storage technology — at the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton.

We connected Peter to Elon’s team at SpaceX to create a set of discs containing the Foundation Trilogy of science fiction books written by Elon Musk’s favourite American author, Isaac Asimov.

The discs were placed in the glovebox of the Tesla Roadster Space X launch in February 2018.

Over the last few years, scientists at the ORC have made a major step forward in the development of digital data storage that is capable of surviving for billions of years. Using nanostructured glass, they have developed the recording and retrieval processes of five dimensional (5D) digital data by femtosecond laser writing.

Professor Peter Kazansky said: “This is major step forward for humankind and I am delighted that the ORC is part of this mission. It is visionary projects like this that help us push forward with research and development into 5D data storage with even greater data capacity.”

The storage allows unprecedented properties in terms of data data capacity, thermal stability up to 1,000°C and virtually unlimited lifetime at room temperature opening a new era of ‘eternal’ data archiving. The technology was first experimentally demonstrated in 2013 when a 300 kB digital copy of a text file was successfully recorded in 5D.

As a very stable and safe form of portable memory, the technology could be highly useful for organisations with big archives, such as national archives, museums and libraries, to preserve their information and records.