Researchers aim to store all of human knowledge for eternity — via DNA
Hard drives die and cloud servers don’t last forever. Researchers at ETH Zurich think DNA, sealed in glass, could preserve civilisation’s knowledge for an almost unlimited time.
That hard drive you use to store all your important documents won’t last forever. Neither will the servers holding the family photos you uploaded to the cloud. Paper documents can last centuries if properly stored — but they’re also easily destroyed by mould or fire.
Scientists in Switzerland think they’ve found a better way: a method that could theoretically store ‘all of civilization’s knowledge… within a few cubic meters’ for an almost unlimited amount of time.
Researchers Robert Grass and Reinhard Heckel of ETH Zurich are working to translate information into DNA and store the code in small glass capsules — essentially fossilising human knowledge for future generations.
- This was a shared feature with a video of Dr. Grass explaining the process. Text ported to the new template; the original media lives on the source post.