Using Crystals to Store Data

JaredJames

Well PF needs to draw a line somewhere. I can come up with a whole host of "is it possible" questions based on youtube videos.

I don't know about the possibility of it, I have seen nothing to indicate it is though.

Kalrag

Alright I beleive what the process is called is holographic memory storage. I found an article about it on how-stuff-works.com and it seemed to help alot.

JaredJames

Right, now we're getting somewhere.

This is the sort of thing you're looking at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_data_storage

turbo

Crystal skulls were promoted as pre-Columbian artifacts, but have been pretty soundly proven to have been frauds, made of quartz from Madagascar or Brazil, and likely carved in Idar-Oberstein - a town of skilled craftsmen working in stone. Even by the late 1800s, these skulls were being tagged as fakes, so a modern-day video touting them as real is pretty ridiculous.

JaredJames

True, but the question regarding data storage in a crystal is valid (now we have an understanding on it).

However, I'm not sure if it applies to crystals:
(Wiki on Holographic Data Storage)

So you need a material that is photosensitive and I don't believe crystal is, so it won't do the job.

So no, you can't store data in crystals.

Borek

Not sure about crystals, but I am sure it is possible to store data in glass

http://www.3bscientific.com/noveltie...018_680_0.html

The way object inside looks IS an information.

turbo

Natural crystals such as quartz are probably not going to be very useful for any holographic storage. I imagine that any such usable storage material will have to be doped with photosensitive additives.

Dr Lots-o'watts

A quick search with the keywords from that video leads to some guy who both worked on quartz for IBM, and also sold quartz as spiritual items. One of those two jobs is scientific, the other is not. That may be where the confusion comes from.

Dr Lots-o'watts

Quartz can be laser-cut, but I'm not sure if the details can be as fine as in glass or if there are any technical advantages.

lxman

I found this article rather interesting. Didn't understand it all, but I thought it might be applicable here.

http://www.diamond.ac.uk/Home/Beamli...a-storage.html

siiix

how about this :
http://www.itpro.co.uk/616444/minisc...-to-store-data

but its not the crystals most of us wold like to see - the pretty ones from movies , its a gel turning partially to crystals under focused light.. i think it would look more like a gel filled cylinder if they ever figure this out

joe_gunn

May I suggest that before we attempt to store & retrieve data, possibly we should try to store energy in a crystal. Technically that has already been accomplished in devices such as Ruby lasers. Ruby is a crystal, and if the two end-mirrors were not polished to be semi-permeable (so as to let out the light of given intensity), but rather fully reflective towards the inside of the crystal, it may be possible to store and carry that energy for some time. Of course, it would eventually decay as heat, but storing energy in a crystal, in my mind, would be the first step towards data storage in crystals. I completely agree with previous post that polarization and phase are essential for data fidelity.

cosmik debris

Illiac IV had thin film memory which was etched on glass and read out by laser.

siiix

but thats only 1 time writable , although even 1 time writable media crystals would be way cooler then todays plastics disks

JaredJames

Even thought it works in exactly the same way and would need to be the same shape because we don't have a cheap and easy way of reading 3D structures in that way.

So you basically end up with a CD made of crystal. How useful.

vadadagon

FWIW the short answer is yes. Not in massive amount (not yet anyway) and it was accomplished in the 1940s.

The next significant advance in computer memory was with acoustic delay line memory developed by J. Presper Eckert in the early 1940s. Through the construction of a glass tube filled with mercury and plugged at each end with a quartz crystal, delay lines could store bits of information within the quartz and transfer it through sound waves propagating through mercury. Delay line memory would be limited to a capacity of up to a few hundred thousand bits to remain efficient.


reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_memory
More reference - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Presper_Eckert
More reference - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory

But don't rely solely on Wikipedia

Other references -
http://history-computer.com/People/EckertBio.html
http://wvegter.hivemind.net/abacus/C...oes/Eckert.htm
http://www.decodesystems.com/delay-line-memory.html
http://www.computer.org/portal/web/a...preneuereckert
http://www.google.com/search?q=Delay...A&ved=0CEEQsAQ


Hope this answers your question. Like I said short answer is Yes (read more for details).

StringJunky

Fast forward a year or so:



A woman holds up Japanese electronics giant Hitachi's new quartz glass plate technology, which can be used to store data indefinitely, in Tokyo on September 24. The company on Monday unveiled a method of storing digital information on slivers of quartz glass that can endure extreme temperatures and hostile conditions without degrading, almost forever.

To read more: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-japan-hitachi.html#jCp