Scientists have created “a form of information immortality” meant to instruct future species on how to recreate humans.
If humanity ever goes extinct, scientists now have a backup plan: a coin-sized crystal storing the entire human genome. Future species could use this record as an instructional manual to recreate humans some millions - or even billions - of years from the present.
It sounds like science fiction, but it’s very real, according to a statement from England’s University of Southampton. Scientists inscribed the genetic data into a 5D memory crystal equivalent to fused quartz, a type of glass that is recognised to be the most durable data storage material.
Lead researcher Peter Kazansky, an optoelectronics expert at the University of Southampton, told Technology Networks that they were "inspired by the possibility that this technology could assist in the reconstruction of a person using stored genetic information, thus providing a form of information immortality that could safeguard human identity long into the future.”
Kazansky and his team transcribed the human genome using ultra-fast lasers that encoded the data into tiny voids in silica as small as 20 nanometers. “The information is translated into five different dimensions of its nanostructures - their height, length, width, orientation and position,” reports CNN. Hence the 5D.
Etched onto the crystal’s face is a visual key, containing depictions of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen atoms, as well as the DNA double helix and its four nucleotide bases. The team included a breakdown of a chromosome’s molecular structure, as well as how it fits into a cell, and drawings of a man and a woman.
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