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Stanford's Quantum Hologram Sets Storage Record

Posted by timothy on from the whiffs-of-ephemera dept.

eldavojohn writes "It's often assumed that representing data reaches a limit when you get to the point that an atom represents one bit in some form or fashion. But Stanford University researchers have used a quantum hologram model to store the characters 'S' and 'U' by encoding the data at a rate of 35 bits per electron."

24 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. STFU... by Narnie · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sweet... now they're just a 'T' and 'F' away from writing something useful.

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    greed@All_Evils:~#
    1. Re:STFU... by pnevin · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sweet... now they're just a 'T' and 'F' away from writing something useful.

      That's just cynical. Everyone knows that this is just a step towards the ultimate goal - an 16-atom-tall image of Princess Leia.

  2. Re:versus USB by b4dc0d3r · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wow, the only thing more dense is Stanford's quantum hologram. A close second, as usual, is the first post, followed by the secretary at work.

  3. Sub nano data recovery??? by schizz69 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I bet recovering data off an atom could prove...... Difficult. :s

    1. Re:Sub nano data recovery??? by Clever7Devil · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's why you need redundancy. Do I hear 2 atoms?

      --
      "By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
    2. Re:Sub nano data recovery??? by CastrTroy · · Score: 5, Funny

      So, would that leave you with a Redundant Independant Array of Atoms (RIAA)? Perfect for storing my music.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    3. Re:Sub nano data recovery??? by pushing-robot · · Score: 4, Funny

      But that could get expensive fast. How much does each atom cost?

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    4. Re:Sub nano data recovery??? by Fear+the+Clam · · Score: 4, Funny

      They should do it with positrons.

      Are you sure?

  4. That's great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    And by letting S=0 and U=1 we can now represent a bit using 70 bits! Oh wai-

  5. Space versus time tradeoff by Carnildo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They're storing data in a small space, sure, but it's got the same problem that traditional holograms do: it takes a good deal of computation time to figure out how to encode the information you want in wave patterns.

    --
    "They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
    1. Re:Space versus time tradeoff by Solder+Fumes · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Maybe quantum computers will be really good at doing this.

  6. Dwell not by dmomo · · Score: 4, Funny

    At least your device is also capable of holding the "B"

  7. Neat by ShooterNeo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    One thing most 'futurists' agree on is that the ultimate 'end game' of technology appears to be the conversion of all matter in the solar system into machine parts and computational elements. It's a logical end result of exponential growth. (and, actually, would be only the beginning : such a 'civilization' would eventually grow to convert the entire universe, but this would take much longer due to the snails pace of light)

    It's neat to think that such a civilization could store even more information than an obvious cap of '1 bit per atom'.

    1. Re:Neat by nine-times · · Score: 4, Funny

      One thing most 'futurists' agree on is that the ultimate 'end game' of technology appears to be the conversion of all matter in the solar system into machine parts and computational elements. It's a logical end result of exponential growth. (and, actually, would be only the beginning : such a 'civilization' would eventually grow to convert the entire universe, but this would take much longer due to the snails pace of light)

      What makes you think this hasn't already happened? Maybe we're part of a big computer thats trying to answer some kind of big question or something.

      Actually, never mind. That seems infinitely improbable to me.

    2. Re:Neat by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 4, Funny

      Maybe we're just somebody's porn collection.

      --
      This space available.
    3. Re:Neat by DigiShaman · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well that's good. At least we will be the last thing to be deleted on the vast cosmic hard drive.

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
    4. Re:Neat by JWman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's a logical end result of exponential growth.

      Actually, that logic is flawed. The assumption that we will continue to see exponential growth forever in anything is pretty flawed, simply because of different laws kicking in. Look at trends in computer ownership, or TVs or anything else that hits its prime and hits it big. For a good while these things do have an exponential growth curve, but obviously that growth cannot continue indefinitely, or people would have to start buying two or three TV sets at a time every couple of days, and then the next week buy 3 TV sets every day, and then every hour....

      This is the fundamental problem with extrapolation taken too far. The truth of the matter is that you have no idea what the curve looks like, regardless of how much data you have. It could be exponential growth for thousands of years, and then suddenly take a nose dive and drop back down close to where it started, or perhaps grow faster. Extrapolating too far is foolishness that happens far too often.
      I've heard the discussion of converting all matter into computational elements, but a FAR more likely growth curve for computing power is not exponential, but sigmoidal.

      Thus, I would argue that converting all matter into computational elements would be the asymptotic 'end game' of technology that we will never quite reach, but always be moving towards (though our progress will slow). Many growth patterns follow a sigmoidal curve.

    5. Re:Neat by antibryce · · Score: 4, Funny

      when I was 10-11 my dad caught me looking at porn on our C64. The next day my mom made him pack the computer up for several years until we got a new PC.

      Let's hope God doesn't have a mom.

    6. Re:Neat by foniksonik · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's why there is that nasty speed of light constraint in this universe... you can't see past the light horizon... well you can but not in the present time, you only get to see pre-computed archived data.

      --
      A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
  8. They did... how much?? by w0mprat · · Score: 4, Informative

    35 bits per electron?! This kind of resets a few common assumptions about how much data can be stored in matter. Feynman was right.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There's_Plenty_of_Room_at_the_Bottom

    --
    After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
    1. Re:They did... how much?? by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If I understand holography and what they're doing correctly (and I DID work as a tech in Emmett Leith's lab so I have some clue), they're transforming the information.

      Yes, each electron has information from 35 bits. But more than one electron has that same information, encoded differently. How many storage electrons do they need to encode it in a way that is recoverable?

      The information per electron is the total information encoded divided by the total number of electrons needed to encode it at a high enough resolution to be recovered.

      Also: The illustration of the way they're encoding it looks like it's not just electrons that encode it, but also their absence. Add in HOLES to the count of "things encoding the bits".

      I'll be surprised if the total comes out to more than one bit per electron site. (Note that they may get more than one such site per atom.)

      --
      Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  9. Re:Wowie! by Selfbain · · Score: 4, Funny

    My god! You're so right! We should like totally stop doing research because it's so hard and takes effort.

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    Well, it has never been successfully tested.
  10. Screw bytes per dollar by kkrajewski · · Score: 5, Funny

    I want the most bytes per MOLE next time I shop for a hard disk!

  11. Re:Carbon-13 storage by Yeti.SSM · · Score: 5, Funny

    Radioactive storage anyone?

    Then all your pr0n collection would decay after some time. Not a viable solution.

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    R Tape loading error, 0:1