Data is the raw material that, when organized and analyzed, transforms into valuable information. In a world overflowing with information, data is the key driver of this transformation, but before it can be structured, interpreted and presented in a way that makes it actionable or valuable, it needs to be stored properly.
To preserve important data for the long term, humans have created initiatives like the Arctic World Archive, ensuring data remains safe from threats like natural disasters and global conflicts, and that data can be retained for hundreds of years, maybe more.
This time, researchers have found a new way to store data even longer.
Pushing the boundaries on how data can be preserved for future generations, researchers have found that they can use diamonds to store data for millions of years.
To put this into another perspective, that's significantly longer than the existence of Homo sapiens, who have been around for only about 300,000 years.
A team of engineers at the University of Science and Technology of China realized that they can fire ultrafast laser pulses at diamonds to displace the carbon atoms and create tiny vacancies within the crystal lattice.
These vacancies, essentially "empty spaces," became the building blocks for data storage.
This is possible because these spaces are essentially holes in the diamond that gather nitrogen.
The idea is to replace some of the carbon atom next to a vacant spot, and replace it with nitrogen. As a result, these vacancy centers can exhibit fluorescent properties that are stable.
The density of vacancies in a specific area determined the diamond's brightness, which could represent different data values.
By precisely controlling the arrangement of these vacancies, the researchers were able to encode data within the diamond.
In their paper published in the journal Nature Photonics, the researchers noted that such optical discs could hold data safely at room temperature for millions of years.
They also detailed how they achieved such staggering milestone by also making a record-breaking storage density of 1.85 terabytes per cubic centimeter by encoding information inside a diamond-laced optical disk.
That is an equivalent of a storage density of 14.8 Tbit cm−3.
What that means, the optical disc that has the same volume as a Blu-ray disk, can store around 100 terabytes of data, or roughly 2,000 times as much data.
To demonstrate the capabilities of their diamond storage system, the researchers encoded a number of images, including the a famous Eadweard Muybridge’s 1878 sequence of photos showing a rider on a galloping horse.
The team then stored images by mapping the brightness of each pixel to the brightness levels of specific sites inside the diamond, and in the demonstration, the researchers showed that the system achieved a remarkable level of accuracy and completeness, successfully storing and retrieving the images with 99%.
The team worked with diamonds that are only a few millimeters long, but reckon their techniques can scale.
At this time, the method requires expensive lasers and high-speed fluorescence imaging cameras, along with other devices, but in the future, the researchers expect that their diamond-based system could eventually be miniaturized to fit within a space the size of a microwave oven.
"In the short term, government agencies, research institutes and libraries focused on archiving and data preservation would likely be eager to adopt this technology," said Ya Wangm at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei.
This is possible due to the traits diamonds have.
Diamonds, which are a solid form of the element carbon, are formed over millions to billions of years deep within the Earth's mantle, under extreme heat and pressure. The process begins when carbon atoms bond in a crystal structure, forming the hard, transparent material we recognize as diamond.
Natural diamonds are formed under conditions of extreme temperature and extreme pressure, deep within the Earth's mantle.
The atoms endured these extremities for at least one billion years, before their structure is rearranged from less stable forms, like graphite, into the tightly-packed crystal structure of diamond
And when diamonds are formed, their structure are incredibly durable and stable, meaning they don't degrade over time.
This is why anything that is etched in it, can last indefinitely.
No maintenance or energy source is further required.
But if exposed to high temperatures, like 200°C, which is as hot as an oven, data can still be preserved, but for about 100 years only.
As for how data can be so stored in such a small space, that is because diamond is so dense.
Diamonds, known for being the hardest materials known to exist, are also known having tightly packed arrangement of carbon atoms in its crystal lattice structure that made them they way they are.