Researchers have encoded the entire human genome on a ‘5D memory crystal’ in case our species needs to pull back from the brink of extinction. But even if the plan ultimately fails, the device itself is theoretically capable of providing our genetic code to another future sentient third party, even if it takes them billions of years to find it.
For more than a decade, the gold standard for the most durable data storage medium has been crystal. More specifically, a nanostructured glass disk, developed in 2014 by a team of researchers led by optoelectronics professor Peter Kazansky at the University of Southampton. The 360-terabyte data crystal will remain stable at room temperature for 300 quintillion years – a lifespan that only drops to 13.8 billion years (i.e. the current age of the universe) when heated to 374 degrees Fahrenheit. Add to that the ability to survive both higher and lower temperatures, direct impact forces of up to 10 tons per square centimeter and long-term exposure to cosmic rays, and it’s easy to see how it’s still the Guinness World Record Holder for the most durable digital storage medium. Given increasing concerns about today’s often unreliable digital landscape, this is also one of the first choices when archiving electronic information securely.
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Knowing this, Kazansky’s group recently set out to encode the human genome’s three billion characters into one of their coin-sized memory crystals. According to one university profileKazansky and colleagues used ultrafast lasers to etch the DNA code into cavities in the disk’s silica as small as 20 nanometers wide. While most traditional tools for recording information (such as paper and magnetic tape) are two-dimensional, the researchers encoded in the crystal uses “two optical dimensions and three spatial coordinates to write throughout the material” in what they describe as (technically) “5D.”
Inspired by the iconic Golden Records from the Voyager mission, the disc also includes a visual key explaining how to use it. There are also illustrations of male and female people; the universal elements hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen; The molecular structure of DNA and other potentially necessary information needed to synthetically create a person.
Speaking of which, Kazansky’s team is well aware that current technology isn’t nearly advanced enough to do what their drive is intended to help achieve. That said, milestones in synthetic biology, such as the 2010 creation synthetic bacteria indicate that a future with artificially created people – but also plants and animals – could be possible.
“We know from the work of others that genetic material from simple organisms can be synthesized and used in an existing cell to create a viable living specimen in a laboratory,” says Kazansky. said in a statement. “The 5D memory crystal opens up possibilities for other researchers to build an eternal repository of genomic information from which complex organisms such as plants and animals can be recovered if science allows in the future.”
For now, the “5D memory crystal” encoded by the human genome is stored in the Memory of humanity archive, a time capsule project in the world’s oldest salt mine in Hallstatt, Austria. If all goes according to plan, it will remain that way until it is potentially needed – hopefully never.
