Turns out the biggest decay factor is nanograting and the biggest contributing physical quantity is temperature. They plotted what decay would look like on an Arrhenius plot. They both computed estimates and measured to confirm: the measurements are quite accurate. The specific claim is that they computed that it would last 13.8Gy at a some reasonably high temperature (462K). They could've picked any other point on the time/temp scale, like "here's how long it would last at room temperature" or "here's how hot you could store it if you only cared about it for a billion years".
They did not, however, simply make up a number with no justification, let alone commit straight-up academic fraud, as you're implying.
The paper is here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297892219_Eternal_5....
Choosing a temperature in order to say "this will last as long as the universe's current age", or finding ways to count extra dimensions is the behaviour of marketeers, not academics.
(I'm not quoting the other authors, who are of course also distinguished scholars :-))
A more useful number would be MTBF or a decay rate.
Right, the concept of storing data in crystalline like structures is not new and there's good technical reasons to believe the technology is a goer. (See my more general comment hereunder giving reasons.)
BTW, this is a truly exciting development, let's hope the practical implementation doesn't stall.
And it looks like it is the idea behind that storage medium. I haven't read the paper though so I can't really comment on whether or not it is justified to call it 5D.
Also note that 4+ dimensions are relevant even in a 3D world. For example the Lytro camera really outputs 4D light fields (2D position + 2D angle). Of course, there is nothing extradimensional about that camera, it is just a microlens network in front of a regular CCD, with processing that converts a high resolution 2D image into a low resolution 4D light field.
There is a common conceit to treat a vector of possible properties as one (small) dimension. For example, we can make your light field hold an RGB value at each coordinate. We can alternatively interpret this as a 5D field of 3D luminance vectors or a 6D field of luminance scalars.
However, if someone writes out a set of these light-field measurements as individual measurements, they might append the coordinate vector and the properties vector into one longer point (x, y, z, a1, a2, r, g, b) and claim it is 8D. However, that perspective ignores that a real light field cannot store more than one color combination at a given (x, y, z, a1, a2) coordinate. An arbitrary 8D point cloud can represent nonsensical, sparse superpositions of multiple light fields.
In ML, we regularly accept 100+d data (much higher for imaging applications). Even simple mechanical systems have large state vectors.
I’m a regular critic of university systems but this isn’t the university making stuff up because it sounds impressive.
(Additional evidence: one of the authors is a Microsoft employee, not an academic employed by the University of Southampton.)
When the number of dimensions is so close to 3, and the subject of discussion is ways to physically store data, this appears misleading.
(I work in the same lab but on different things)
“We have not (yet) built a full storage system and are currently building out (multiple) prototype read and write heads.”
“the prototype decoder achieves an accuracy of 99.47% across ... voxels written at two micron lateral separation, over 10 layers.”
“we anticipate that in a volume equivalent to a DVD-disk we can write about 1 TB. The technology can potentially get to 360 TB”
1. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2018/0...
Dimensions are the conventional term when talking about aspects of data. It doesn't just have to be spatial data, although that's the common usage of dimensions.
If you're using the 3d position with two additional dimensions of size and rotation of the object at that position, you're literally processing 5 measurable dimensions of input in order to extract data.
It's not like they're claiming to record data in time and a wibbly wobbly 5th dimension. It's a literal mathematical dimension describing the properties of the recording medium and method.
It's completely common for scientists to use more than 3D, since D does not have to mean spatial dimensions. Relativity is 4D (space+time), M-Theory is 11 or 26 or 10 depending on context.
Even classical mechanics is formulated as 6D (3 position, 3 momentum). This leads to Hamiltonians and Lagrangians, cornerstones of modern physics, upon which all modern physics is based.
As to light, it's east to find multiple dimensions to store light patterns: 3D space, 1 D polarization, 1D frequency, and now we have 5 independent dimensions in which to store data.
5D, if they use 5 independent degrees of freedom to store data, does not undermine the science - it makes it precise.
The title of the paper is "5D Data Storage by Ultrafast Laser Writing in Glass" and is an invited paper at a top conference in their field. I suspect the '5D' being in the title means it is not marketing hype but actual physics.
EDIT: Here [1] is the paper. They do use 5 degrees of freedom as I expected: 3 position, slow-axis orientation, and retardance. So it most certainly is 5D storage.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297892219_Eternal_5...
data = read_bit(x, y, z, yaw, size)
But i agree, i would appreciate more information if they are going to use buzz-words.
"In mathematics, the dimension of an object is, roughly speaking, the number of degrees of freedom of a point that moves on this object."
If you have 3 spatial dimensions x, y, z, then you can have 3 degrees of freedom by translation and scaling along those dimensions. You can also have another 3 degrees of freedom by rotation around planes x^y, x^z, and y^z. I'm not sure what degrees of freedom are represented by the dimensionless scalar and pseudoscalar x^y^z, but probably one of them is mana points, and the other is hit points.
Two spatial dimensions give you two translation/scaling axes (x, y), one rotation (x^y), and one stamina points (scalar).
A 4x4 transformation matrix has 16 values, suggesting 4 dimensions, but it doesn't have 16 degrees of freedom, because several values are constrained. Nine values have three degrees of freedom, three other values have three more, and four are fixed, with zero degrees of freedom. Those six degrees of freedom suggest three dimensions, where two of the potential degrees of freedom are ignored.
So a higher-dimensional mathematical space can embed a lower-dimensional model, if the constraints are clever enough, and map the degrees of freedom onto the right dimensions or combination of dimensions. This might be useful for generating smoother animations using linear interpolation, or avoiding gimbal lock, or attempting to unify gravitation with electronuclear forces, or something else.
"Term of art" might be a subjective concept, but the article making it up or not is objective.
That said, the article is heavy on marketing (13.8 billion year claim is not scientific, at least in spirit) and looks like PR department product.
In what sense is this "not scientific"?
What’s special about 462K? Is it a local min/max? Doesn’t seem so.
Given that they had a hypothesis, designed an experiment and validated the result, it seems a bit much to say it "flys[sic] in the face of the foundations of science".
Not on Earth, not in space, when real considerations like impact resistance are in.
Neural networks used for AI are represented by N-dimensional spaces of, for example, 1024 dimensions.
People have been storing things in 5D on wood substrate for years. Like clothes in the closet (the 2 extra Ds might be type and color).
The terminology is clearly mean to impress the general audience that would normally not even bother to read a classic "engineering" title.
With 2d I can double the length or width to double the capacity.
With 3d I can double the length width or height to double capacity.
That's why 3d storage is interesting.
A byproduct of public disinvestment in higher ed. Nowadays, you've got to show the taxpayers, and donors, where their money goes. Which is not all bad in my opinion.
Turns out the biggest decay factor is nanograting and the biggest contributing physical quantity is temperature. They plotted what decay would look like on an Arrhenius plot. They both computed estimates and measured to confirm: the measurements are quite accurate. The specific claim is that they computed that at a specific temperature (462K) the medium will last 13.8Gy: their point is that it would last as long as the age of the universe at that temperature. They could've picked any other point on the time/temp scale, like "here's how long it would last at room temperature".
They did not, however, simply make up a number with no justification, let alone commit straight-up academic fraud.
The actual paper is here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297892219_Eternal_5...
Are they from flatland? If not, how do they calculate motion?
To clarify what I mean when I talk about what I think they mean (yes that sentence is confusing), consider the following example:
The pits on a DVD are subject to one-dimensional analysis because every position targeted by the laser for a read operation can be in one of 2 states (i.e. 2^1)
The pits on a dual-layer DVD are subject to two-dimensional analysis because every position targeted by the laser for a read operation can be in one of four states (i.e. 2^2, because there are two layers and each layer can be in one of 2 states independently of the other)
If I understand the article right, this technology uses 3 physical layers, and adjusts the size and orientation of each air pocket in the glass. So on each individual layer, a dot can be categorized in any one of 8 states (2^3) and there are 3 layers (2^3) of dots. That should give 2^6 possible states per read operation. So why do they say 5 instead of 6? There could be any number of reasons, such as certain adjustments to size and orientation at a higher layer affecting the ability to read from a lower layer, or error correction built into the decoding algorithm.
But yeah, that's my lukewarm take on their silly buzzwords.
The 5D in the article is kind of fishy, but in this case size and orientation are more of a low resolution dimension like multi-level cells in a flash drive.
Thanks to lvh, who pushed me to actually look at the paper.
I think your emphatic view is somewhat ill-informed. For years it's been theorized that glass-like crystals could store information indefinitely—even well beyond the age of the universe. Here's the reasoning:
1. The oldest crystals known on earth are already some 4.4 billions years old and they are still intact. They are zircon crystals found in various places across the planet but the oldest discovered to date were found in Australia.
2. For all intents and purposes these zircon crystals still contain most of their original encoded information from the time they were formed. The reason we know this is that these crystals have remained essentially intact and structurally undamaged over their lifetime of some 4.4 billion years—by definition, if they'd lost all their information they would no longer be intact crystals.
3. Yes, they will have lost a tiny percentage of their information integrity from the time when they were formed, this data loss would have been the result of small amounts of both internal and external radiation and from external cosmic ray radiation, heat and other environmental effects, nevertheless zircon is a very hardy material and this loss has been minimal.
(Essentially, restating the obvious, as zircon has been shown to keep most of its data intact for at least one third of known length of the universe (13.8/4.4 Gy) then by extension the storage time mentioned in the paper [13.8 Gy] for this glassy crystalline structure is highly feasible).
4. If these 4.4 Gy zircon crystals had originally been encoded in ways that allowed lossless data recovery such as Reed-Solomon encoding as used in CDs and DVDs to recover data then today we would be able to recover ALL of the original information from 4.4 Gy ago.
5. We know that under ideal conditions some crystals such as zircon and others have lives of much longer than 4.4 Gy. Why? Well crystal structures are known to be the most stable forms of matter in the universe that goes with the fact that they have the lowest entropy: https://www.livescience.com/50942-third-law-thermodynamics.h... — to quote: “The entropy of a perfect crystal is zero when the temperature of the crystal is equal to absolute zero (0 K).”
6. Theoretically, a perfect crystal with zero entropy in an ideal environment would keep its information for eternity—which is much longer than the age of the universe. Now, as we know zircon and its data/structural information can exist almost intact for at least 4.4 Gy and that a perfect crystal kept under ideal conditions will do so for ever, logic dictates that we cannot rule out that crystals cannot last the age of the universe which is ≈13.8 Gy.
7. That said however, making crystals that last the age of the universe is one thing but keeping them sufficiently intact to be able to recover all their data after this length of time is another matter altogether. To do so—as mentioned—we would have to encode the crystals with a data recovery algorithm and ensure that they were safe from cosmic radiation etc. (Even with hardy crystals such as zircon we may have to send them to a part of the universe that's very low in ambient cosmic radiation (but we'd have plenty of time to do so given their intrinsically long and hardy life).)
8. The ultimate life of encoded data in near-perfect crystals would be the product of the universe's environment and the degree of how perfect the crystal was (how close to zero its entropy was). A similar problem arises with ancient DNA, no matter how well DNA may me stored against damage it ultimately will succumb to damage from cosmic radiation which on current estimates is about 1 to 2 million years [right, Jurassic Park is not possible by resurrecting DNA at least]. Keep in mind however that zircon-like crystals are millions of times more hardy and resilient than is DNA.
9. As I said, the concept of storing data in stable crystal structures is not new. Seeing the crystal/glass-like photo in this article I cannot help be reminded of the remarkable similarity between it and HAL's crystal-like memory in Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's 1968 classic science fiction film '2001: A Space Odyssey'. I'm pretty certain, one way or other, crystal data storage of this type will be the norm before long.
10. Oh, BTW, for those who might worry about the concept of 5D not making much sense, I can assure you it's pretty common these days, it even extends down to what's called 5-axis machine tools: http://www.5-axis.org/
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: please stop posting flamebait generally. You've been doing it repeatedly, and we ban that sort of account regardless of its views.
To not use such well known examples on the grounds of a form of political correctness is both absurd and it also denies us our culture and heritage.
I do not believe in the literal truth of the Bible as such, but I certainly do not deny its importance in Western Culture. Moreover, the King James Edition of 1611 is one of the most remarkable texts ever written [perhaps you should read a few bits of it some time], especially so given that it was written by a committee—committees usually produce Lowest Common Denominators but that certainly wasn't so for the KJE!
There is nothing inconsistent with what I have said here.
___
* I was nearly going to say "for Heaven's sake" but I thought better of it. ;-)
What is it telling me about the researchers!
Also, Christianity is the largest religion... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations
Sales is an approximation for readership. The second source also claims "figures may incorporate populations of secular/nominal adherents".
So, while I agree that populations that identify with Christianity may be larger, it's pretty obvious a lot of those do not observe the rituals the religions they identify with specify.
To get a better readership proxy, perhaps, one could use the share in sales of religious texts across the different demographics.
Then we need to also define what "read" means. Does it mean the book was read cover to cover or does it mean the book is read from occasionally? Religious texts are used in very different ways than other forms of literature, to the point comparison borders the questionable.
If researchers at KAUST had decided to etch the Quran as a sign of devotion and humility before the unknown, what would have been the problem?
None!
For the decision of who to honor is solely of the creator(s) and not of some political commissar
Press releases. Whatta-ya-gonna-do?
Are you suggesting they pulled this out of their backside? The research very much supports that number.
No wonder public discourse is so terrible nowadays, when people are willing to dismiss entire institutions based on an arbitrary image in a press release. But, I guess that's just a step or two removed from asking someone to be fired because one time they interviewed or were seen with someone else who's opinions you don't agree with.
Just because they eventually map to three special dimensions doesn’t mean it’s not useful to talk about the different degrees of freedom you’ve managed to use for storing information.
What were y’all expecting? Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse?
"WMAP estimated the age of the universe to be 13.772 billion years, with an uncertainty of 59 million years. In 2013, Planck measured the age of the universe at 13.82 billion years."
Turns out the biggest decay factor is nanograting and the biggest contributing physical quantity is temperature. They plotted what decay would look like on an Arrhenius plot. They both computed estimates and measured to confirm: the measurements are quite accurate. The specific claim is that they computed that at a specific temperature (462K) the medium will last 13.8Gy -- but their point is that it would last as long as the age of the universe at that temperature, not that the pulled a number out of their backsides.
The actual paper is here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297892219_Eternal_5...
Most likely, for long-term archival, we need to make copies of the data from time to time. But this technique will likely allow those intervals to be longer than the current age of the universe, and it offers higher density than you can get with techniques like Norsam's planar discs, which is a useful improvement over existing media.
5D and 13.8 billion years? Phony. I know no sane scientist or enigneer that would say they use more than 3D physics. Sounds like catch phrases to sell. With such logic plain old HDD is at least 4D, because it uses CHS coordinates and magnetic orientation, to store data.
To me such communication style undermines the real scine behind it. Do they have nothing better to brag about than excuses to call invention 5D? Why introduce such noise?