Coming Soon: Superman’s Memory Crystals

[n2doc]

By Kevin Makice August 22, 2011 | 10:00 am | Categories: Science and Education, Toys and Technology
One of the critical elements of the Superman mythos is the tacit information transfer from Jor-El to his son, despite the former having been blown to smithereens on Krypton years earlier. In the 1978 movie, the technology used is a memory crystal containing an artificial intelligence version of the late Jor-El acting as a guide to the sum of Kryptonian knowledge about the universe.

While the self-replicating properties of these crystals are still an unknown, real-life scientists are trying to unlock the data storage capabilities of glass. The process has resulted in a storage capacity of 50 GB (the equivalent of a Blu-ray Disc) on a slice of glass about the size of a mobile phone screen.


Researchers have found ways to store lots of data in glass.
Researchers from Optoelectronics Research Centre at Southampton University have developed a technique for computer memory using lasers and glass. This glass memory, they claim, is more stable than current storage techniques for hard drive memory, offering higher resistance to temperature, moisture and time. It is also about 20 times cheaper than current techniques.

The technique uses a silver dollar-sized circle of glass as an Optical Vortex Converter to create whirlpools of polarized light. A laser cuts tiny dots — 3D pixels, or voxels — into the surface, changing the opacity of the glass and giving optical detectors something to read. Data can be written and re-written into the molecular structure of the glass, a durable material that can withstand temperatures of 1800 degrees (F). The academic paper published in Applied Physics Letters is available online (PDF).

more

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/08/coming-soon-supermans-memory-crystals/

Of course, maybe they could build HAL....just don't give it control of life support.

[mike_c]

1. this is still optical storage technology, isn't it?

I mean, does this differ fundamentally from CDs and DVDs? Isn't it just a more durable surface to store the information on? I suppose the write technology likely involves different lasers since they have to etch glass.

The article is a bit confusing though:

A laser cuts tiny dots — 3D pixels, or voxels — into the surface, changing the opacity of the glass and giving optical detectors something to read. Data can be written and re-written into the molecular structure of the glass, a durable material that can withstand temperatures of 1800 degrees (F).

The first sentence reads like current optical technology applied to a new material, but the second sentence is, um, WAY different. My first thought when I saw the headline was "How can you store information in disordered media?" since glass is an amorphous solid-- that second sentence suggests that they do, but it's still unclear to me what etching optical dots on the surface has to do with writing (and re-writing!) information into the amorphous molecular structure.