How efficient? Team lead Sander Otte stated that the approach could in theory put every book ever into a space the size of a postage stamp. According to a Popular Mechanics write-up, that’s enough to “fit the entire Library of Congress on a cube smaller than a dust mite—or the size of George Washington’s pupil on a one dollar bill.”
How It Works
Popular Mechanics also sums up the fascinating data storage process in a few paragraphs:
One Big Problem
But the data storage method is far from perfect: […] The arrangement of atoms and blank spaces translates to individual bits of data. A blank space followed by a chlorine atom is a 0, while the reverse (a chlorine atom and then a blank space) is a 1. Using this method, Otte can store any digital information, be it lines from a speech or small segments of computer code.” More information on the new data storage technology can be found in today’s issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
