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Researchers Store Optical Data In Five Dimensions
Al writes "Researchers from Swinburne University of Technology in Victoria, Australia, have developed an optical material capable of storing information in five dimensions. Using three wavelengths and two polarizations of light, the Australian researchers were able to write six different patterns within the same area. The material is made up of layers of gold nanorods suspended in clear plastic that has been spun flat onto a glass substrate and multiple data patterns can be written and read within the same area in the material without interference. The team achieved a storage density of 1.1 terabytes per cubic centimeter by writing data to stacks of 10 nanorod layers."
Most physicists should be perfectly comfortable applying the term "dimensions" to cases other than spatial dimensions.
Once you're used to infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces, media articles that mention "five-dimensional storage" are only infinitesimally interesting by comparison.
What about color? What about weight? What about temperature? What about how much Barack Obama likes it on a scale of 1-10 assuming that's defined? All of these are valid features to include in your consideration. Perhaps you only care about two of the spacial dimensions, and it's two-dimensional.
Time is not automatically a 4th dimension. I really wish that myth would disappear. It's a convenience for visualizing some forms of 4D things (eg, imagining a hypercube as a normal cube that is gradually changing size) but you can visualize it other ways as well. I prefer to think of a hypercube as a cube plus its color.
Of course, these researchers are totally exploiting that consideration in the population to get fudning. Kind of like how you always add "with implications to homeland security" to the end of proposals, or "the Reds might already have one" in the good old days.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.