A Device the Size of a Postage Stamp Could Store Every Book in Existence

Data storage is rapidly shrinking. Now, a team of nanoscientists led by Sander Otte at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has just announced the densest method ever developed to store re-writable digital data. The method of moving around individual chlorine atoms on a flat sheet of copper can write a 1 kilobyte message at 500 terabits per square inch. Well, for those unfamiliar with these computer measurements, that is about 100 times more info per square inch than the most efficient hard drive can store.

So, the NSA just spent a lot of money on that huge facility to store everyone’s text and phone calls for life, but it could have been 100 times smaller. With this method, you could theoretically fit every book ever written onto a flat copper sheet the size of a postage stamp. The new storage device was outlined in the journal, “Nature Nanotechnology.”