Film, large printed paper, hard disk and optical disk are all commonly used information storage media. But all these mediums have a lifespan that does not last forever. Researchers from the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Center (ORC) have managed to store the entire human genome on a crystal storage system that is said to last up to 1 billion years.
The human genome contains over 3 billion alphabetic characters stored on a crystal surface in the form of a transparent disc. The data is stored using a five-dimensional coding technique with two data stored two-dimensionally and the other three in the form of spatial coordinates. Lasers are used to write characters as small as 20 nanometers on the crystal surface.
In addition to being able to last for 1 billion years, this special crystal has also been tested to survive under extreme cold temperatures, heat up to 1000 °C, withstand pressure up to 10 tons/cm2 and exposure to cosmic radiation. In total, this crystal-based storage system can store up to 360TB of data.
In addition to the complete human genome, the same crystal contains how the data can be read by future generations or aliens. There is information about the four universal elements which are hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen and the four bases of DNA molecules which are adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. There is also a sketch of a picture of DNA in the form of a double helix.
This crystal has been stored in the Memory of Mankind archive located in a salt cave in Hallstatt, Austria as a time capsule for future generations to view.