If this sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, that’s because we’re basically living in a science fiction novel these days. We take things for granted on a daily basis that people from 50 years ago could have never even fathomed.
A paper published by the University of Southampton says “Eternal 5D data storage could record the history of humankind.” That’s cool and everything, but PC Gamer raises a much more valid point…
You could probably store every video game from every console that’s ever been released, on a tiny piece of glass, and still have room for the DLC. (Let’s face it, the DLC is on the tiny piece of glass already, you just have to pay to unlock it.)
When it comes to video games and storage, we’re in a bit of an awkward in-between stage. You don’t need to go to the store to get a physical copy of every game you want to pay, but we’re not at a point where all games are stored in the cloud either. So we can’t really rely on massive hard drives in our homes to completely replace physical media just yet, but bandwidth and other factors need to catch up before cloud gaming becomes the norm.
If you’ve ever had to buy a hard drive or even a memory stick for a console, you know how pricey it can be. Don’t even try to do the math on how much a 360TB drive would cost, we’ll save you the time – it’s going to be A LOT.
It even has room for the Fallout 4 secrets that people haven’t discovered yet…
The secret behind this incredible storage breakthrough is nano-structured glass and special lasers to write the data in 5 dimensions.
“It is thrilling to think that we have created the technology to preserve documents and information and store it in space for future generations. This technology can secure the last evidence of our civilisation: all we’ve learnt will not be forgotten,” said Professor Peter Kazansky.
This quick video shows how it’s made:
The team behind this are looking for commercial partners to help them take this new technology to market. It’s going to be quite a while until this kind of technology finds its way into our homes, because not too many people are eager to have huge, expensive lasers that burn their data onto high-tech pieces of glass. Actually, sign me up, that sounds awesome.