Memory Crystal Holds Entire Human Genome Forever
Have you been sitting up at night thinking about human extinction, the end of all our people on Earth (and elsewhere) way off in the future? Saddled with existential dread about the future of humanity in general and whether we can preserve just a little of human awesomeness we’ve got going right now? Not to worry, because it’s science to the rescue, once again. There is not a 5D memory crystal that can store the full human genome and survive billions (with a B) of years.
Human extinction’s got nothing on this thing.
Human Genome On A Memory Crystal
The news comes from the University of Southampton Optoelectronics Research Center where scientists created a 5D memory crystal from fused quartz that’s about as durable as things get these days.
On the memory crystal, they’ve stored 360 terabytes of data, which will remain stable (it’s not going anywhere) for longer than anyone can really ever imagine.
Three Billion Letters?
On this crystal is inscribed each letter of the roughly three billion letters in the human genome.
And then they did the sequencing 150 times just to make sure things stayed nice and accurate. It’s a remarkable feat of science and engineering using two optical dimensions and three spatial dimensions which, for all you math majors, is where the 5D was cooked up.
The Book Of Being Human
The human genome consists of three billion base pairs of DNA, which together form the full set of genetic information. At its core, human genome sequencing helps scientists understand how single fertilized eggs develop into complex organisms.
Genome mapping helps us understand the past when it comes to evolution and relationships going forward. It is like a big book about being human, from your eye color to your height, illnesses, and every other little thing in between.
Human Extinction?
Mapping the human genome and storing it on this 5D memory crystal is basically making a map of all these books and putting it all together for future generations. Or even more, for future non-human beings that might stumble upon it.
Were humans to ever go extinct (and let’s cross our fingers that we don’t) the mapped human genome would help facilitate reversing this terrible end.
The human genome mapping project used lasers to inscribe the data in silica making it super durable to both extreme heat and cold as wells as all sorts of radiation. Nothing is coming to get this thing. The data won’t degrade or be corrupted. It’s a snapshot of the human genome that can’t be touched or altered.
The Long Game
Can you get your hands on this human genome memory crystal? Not so fast. It’s currently stored in the Memory of Mankind archive in Hallstatt, Austria. There, it’s in a salt cave, inside a time capsule. So no touching.
And it’s not for us anyway. The whole point is for other species in some almost infinite future to have this human map.
When you are thinking about the survival of the human race, we should be thinking in these data storage terms that protect against unimaginable events. From this perspective, it’s an extremely long game.
Source: Phys.org
