British scientists have discovered that the entire human genome is recorded on a 5D memory crystal. They think this discovery could one day serve as a blueprint to prevent the extinction of humanity millions or even thousands of years in the future. The groundbreaking data storage format that can persist for millions or perhaps billions of years can be used to preserve the genomes of endangered plant and animal species, according to the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) team at the University of Southampton.
A university spokesman stressed that, unlike current data storage formats that deteriorate over time, 5D memory crystals can preserve up to 360 terabytes of data (at the largest size) even at high temperatures without losing any information for billions of years. He said, “The crystal is comparable to fused quartz, one of the Earth’s most chemically and thermally durable materials.” It received a Guinness World Record in 2014 as the most durable data storage media.
“It can tolerate temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Celsius, fire, and freezing temperatures,” he continued. The crystal is also unaffected by prolonged exposure to cosmic radiation and can tolerate direct impact forces of up to 10 tonnes per centimetre. Professor Peter Kazansky, who headed the Southampton team, used ultra-fast lasers to precisely etch data onto nano-structured holes orientated within silica, with feature sizes as small as 20 nanometres.
The representative explained, “This encoding method uses two optical dimensions and three spatial coordinates to write throughout the material, hence the ‘5D’ in its name. This is in contrast to marking only on the surface of a 2D piece of paper or magnetic tape.” Professor Peter Kazansky insisted that while if genetic information cannot now be utilised to create humans, plants, or animals artificially, the knowledge would still be available if these breakthroughs were made since the 5D crystal is durable.
He mentioned the Dr. Craig Venter-led team from 2010 that created a synthetic bacterium. It is known from research by others that it is possible to synthesise genetic material from basic creatures and utilise it in an already-existing cell to produce a live specimen in a laboratory. He pointed out that the 5D memory crystal provides opportunities for other scientists to create an eternal genomic databank from which complex species such as plants and animals could be restored if science permits it in the future.
The crystal is preserved at the Memory of Mankind repository, a special time capsule in a salt cave in Hallstatt, Austria. The researchers thought about the possibility that an intelligence (a machine or species) that follows us in the far future could access the data stored within the crystal when developing it. The university spokesperson stated, “it might be discovered so far into the future that no frame of reference exists.”
The four bases of DNA—adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine—as well as their chemical shapes are depicted in the key. It also illustrates how genes fit into chromosomes, which may be introduced into cells, and the universal elements—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. Professor Peter Kazansky states, “The visual key engraved on the crystal gives The finder knowledge of what data is stored inside and how it could be used.” “It is uncertain whether memory crystal technology will surpass these plaques in terms of travel distance, but each disc will probably outlive its intended lifespan,” he continued.
To test this notion, the researchers created a 5D memory crystal that included the whole human genome. To be sure it was there, each of the roughly three billion letters that make up the genome was sequenced 150 times. A collaborator on the deep-read sequencing experiment was Helixwork Technologies.
