5/20/2009 PERMALINK
Nanotubes that can stably store your memories for over a billion years
As digital storage devices have replace paper, archivists have begun to worry that all our memories might one day become as lost as tears in the rain. This is because all current digital storage devices tend to fail after relatively short periods of time, often as little as 5 years.

But now Zettl Research Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley have come up with a solution. A digital memory device with the potential to store your memories at high density for an amazingly long time, in fact say researchers, calculations show that they should remain stable for at least a billion years.

The device consists of a crystalline iron nanoparticle enclosed in a multiwalled carbon nanotube. The nanotube can be reversibly moved through the nanotube by applying a low voltage, "writing" the device to a binary state represented by the position of the nanoparticle. The state of the device can then be subsequently read by a simple resistance measurement.