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IBM Researchers Prove It Is Possible To Store Data In a Single Atom (techcrunch.com)
In an experiment published today in Nature, IBM researchers have managed to read and write data to a single atom. A previous atomic storage technique, as mentioned by TechCrunch, doesn't actually store data in the atom, but moves them around to form readable patterns. "This means that imbuing individual atoms with a 0 or 1 is the next major step forward and the next major barrier in storing data digitally, both increasing capacity by orders of magnitude and presenting a brand new challenge to engineers and physicists," reports TechCrunch. From the report: It works like this: A single Holmium atom (a large one with many unpaired electrons) is set on a bed of magnesium oxide. In this configuration, the atom has what's called magnetic bistability: It has two stable magnetic states with different spins (just go with it). The researchers use a scanning tunneling microscope (also invented at IBM, in the 1980s) to apply about 150 millivolts at 10 microamps to the atom -- it doesn't sound like a lot, but at that scale, it's like a lightning strike. This huge influx of electrons causes the Holmium atom to switch its magnetic spin state. Because the two states have different conductivity profiles, the STM tip can detect which state the atom is in by applying a lower voltage (about 75 millivolts) and sensing its resistance. In order to be absolutely sure the atom was changing its magnetic state and this wasn't just some interference or effect from the STM's electric storm, the researchers set an iron atom down nearby. This atom is affected by its magnetic neighborhood, and acted differently when probed while the Holmium atom was in its different states. This proves that the experiment truly creates a lasting, stored magnetic state in a single atom that can be detected indirectly. And there you have it: a single atom used to store what amounts to a 0 or a 1. The experimenters made two of them and zapped them independently to form the four binary combinations (00,01,10,11) that two such nodes can form.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You're assuming that different information has different masses.
"in" an atom or on it or to it. atoms want to know.
Oh no, does this mean we will soon have a shortage of atoms?
Richard Feynman's talk discussed manipulation at the atomic level as a target to strive for, demonstrating how much room there is for miniaturisation.
Now it seems that we're going to need to drop to the sub-atomic level for further manipulation.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Where does this research fall on the Munroe Scale?
https://xkcd.com/678/
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
It sounds like we may have finally hit the limit for density of data storage. Kinda hard to get below the atomic level.
Think of the amount of data you could store in a single copper BB if the atoms could be used as memory. Holy fuck.
Ten million Libraries of Congress? 100 million? A billion?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
This is why I don't normally object to the volume of patents filed by and granted to IBM. It's R&D that actually leads to useful things.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
This sounds like someone was trying to do some kind of quantum level storage but only got as far as flipping an atom over.
That's why I advocate research into creating pocket universes, especially ones with a flow of time faster than our own. Then the amount of data and processing can become practically infinite at the point where the pocket universe intersects our own.
That's either going to bring the price of STMs way down.
Or the price of memory is going to go through the roof.
So Atom Ant is real!
To clarify what hackwrench wrote, the researchers only changed the information. They did not add new information.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
If information has mass, how much did the atom's mass increase once it was imbued with a 0 or 1?
Did you mean how much did it decrease when its entropy was changed?
No sig today...
With the current state of the art we *potentially* have ultra-miniature storage medium, which is all well and good, but it needs a read/write head the size of a room and a proportionally large power supply.
This and other similar forms of radical memory storage are frightening to me. Not because of anything they do or are, but because they carry a huge implication.
If we humans, certainly not all that advanced, have come up with ways to store data in single atoms like this, or in forms like grains of sand, then what does this suggest about how more advanced species might store and distribute their data? And would we even know it was there?
Suppose right now, the beaches of earth were covered in grains of sand that were really data storage grains. We would have no idea. We'd never look, and even if we did, we would never understand what we had. By the same token, we could be exploring the moon or Mars or somewhere else and encounter non-terrestrial data artifacts and never even see them much less bring them back.
We could have untold wealths of knowledge RIGHT THERE and never know it. If Type 0.5 humans can store data this way, what could a Type 2 civilization do?
We could be surrounded by alien data sand waiting to be discovered, except somebody vacuumed it up from the floor mats in their car and threw it out.
This is the stuff of nightmares. And OCD. And there is nothing we can do about it. We can't detect it.
Sig for hire.
If one atom holds one bit, then one gram of holmium holds about 456 exabytes of data.
For comparison, DNA has sucessfully held data at 215 petabytes/gram.
It's hardly just a single atom involved if they required a magnesium oxide bed for it to rest on.
It's amazing to think that we've gone from the discovery of the electron in (? 1897) to this...
However, if we extrapolate forwards from this discovery, then is it theoretically possible to construct atomic-scale logic gates? Could we conceivably construct a lattice or matrix of atoms - perhaps held on some form of crystalline substrate, in which we could "inject" a signal in the form of a single free electron, only to have that propagate through the structure in a similar manner to the way that logic flows through semi-conductor gates in a contemporary integrated circuit?
Yes, I understand that the mechanisms and scales are completely, utterly different; I understand that the complexity of my postulate is way beyond present-day capability, but I'm curious to know if we could leverage some of the transitional states of matter to achieve this sort of thing?
We've advanced from Charles Babbage to Quantum Computing in ~ 225 years... at a steadily-accelerating pace. I don't think I'd bet against these sorts of advances in the next 225...
Anybody care to explain why not? (Since we all know it wasn't done by Africans).
Must be the 'legacy of slavery' or some other such 'blame all white people' excuse...
I agree. They are sneaky little rascals.
You can only read the data if you don't know the location of the atom.and the data becomes unreadable if you know the location of the atom
Is this the return of the Millipede project?
Let's hope they can get it out the door this time.
A witty
Every few months for the past 20 years there is some news article that IBM has found a way to store data in some strange new way. I remember decades ago something about storing data in crystals with lasers or some shit. Yet what technology are we using today? The same as 20 years ago, semiconductors and disk drives. Can IBM please STFU until they have a shippable product?
the propeller heads are onto something, not!
Same story on Engadget: "IBM built an atomic hard drive! It's 100,000 times more efficient than the state-of-the-art."
IBM's been doing interesting stuff at the atomic level for over 15 years now, and other amazing stuff like crystal storage, yet no products. Interesting science that no one ever benefits from. Maybe the real issue is I need my morning coffee to make me realize this is important.
The good news: new harddrives will have the size of a pin. The bad news: it'll require the scanning tunneling microscope attached to work: http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/hist...
So, now, it'll require more 10 years to work to reduce the scanning tunneling microscope to the size of current harddrives.
The problem with pocket universes is always laundry. You forget to take them out and then when you open the drier you've got universe smeared all over your clothes.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Assuming a qubit has multiple states of being, then couldn't a single atom hold more than just a single bit of data?
Storing information using single atom has been done a decade ago in a Dutch lab.
The technique uses a string of pearl like molecules and then drops an atom to the left or right in the gap where the pearl beads meet:
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OOOOO
O O
What madman insists on incorrectly capitalizing holmium at every opportunity, but correctly knows that iron and magnesium should be lower-case?
Just wait until you get the bill from the recovery company when that one breaks :O
Does the Scanning Tunneling Microscope use a 3-1/2" bay or a full size bay?
other minor detail, they left out how long they stored data,.....
"“It takes longer than our experimental time so far to know — at least several hours,” he wrote in an email. “As the atoms are heated we would expect them to start flipping spontaneously"
Still a couple bugs to work out, the mobile version will require dual axles :)
It's already been done. What universe do you think we're living in?