Data on atoms

Every book ever written, on a sheet the size of a postage stamp. by Alvin Soon

Portrait of Tammy Strobel

Every book ever written, on a sheet the size of a postage stamp. by Alvin Soon

My Reading Room

Researchers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have created a working prototype that stores data at the atomic level. This breakthrough ‘atomic-scale memory’ can, in theory, fill 500 terabits of data into a square inch, which is hundreds of times more than current technology.

For its research, the team from Delft used atoms to write a section of physicist Richard Feynman’s speech about writing data using (what else) atoms. They then deleted the speech, and wrote a segment of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin onto the same atoms, which shows how their prototype can both write and rewrite data.

The development is exciting – the ability to encode data onto individual atoms would allow us to record every book ever written onto a flat copper sheet the size of a stamp. The Delft prototype, however, is still very much in the development phase. The researchers could only write one kilobyte on the device, and it had to be kept rather cold, at -196°C, to prevent data loss.