Only in science fiction did we ever hear about something called holographic memory. It usually involved some futuristic shiny piece of crystal that held the sum total of all human knowledge. Well, holographic memory is fiction no longer. Some scientists at IBM have developed a prototype system that allows information to be stored three-dimensionally inside a crystal cube. To accomplish this, they use two lasers. These lasers are placed at ninety degree angles to each other, so that their beams intersect somewhere in the crystal. When their beams meet, the molecular composition of that one, tiny place in the crystal is changed. From that point on, this “bit” of information can be retrieved by simply using two lower powered lasers to reflect off of that point. Supposedly, using this technology, a person could store thousands of gigabytes (or terabytes) of information on a piece of crystal no bigger than a chandelier piece.
I’m Eric Spellmann, taking you to the Next Level!
More Information
What is Holographic Memory?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_memory
IBM’s info
http://www.research.ibm.com/topics/popups/deep/storage/html/holo.html
How Does It Work?
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/holographic-memory.htm
