Crystal gazing

Could we essentially preserve our species forever? A new 'Superman crystal' holds a map of the entire human genome, in one place. It is made of nanostructured fused quartz, which can withstand almost anything, over billions of years. Who would resurrect us? What else can the crystal do? Take a look

- Bhanuj Kappal

In the sci-fi short story The Monster (1948), Canadian writer AE van Vogt imagines an alien race landing on a dead Earth.

In an effort to find out what happened here, which they must do before they can begin to colonise the planet, they resurrect a human being, bringing the planet's apex predator back from extinction.

Reading the story today can feel a bit strange. Particularly since, this September, researchers at the University of Southampton took a final step in a 10-year project to encapsulate the human genome in a casing that can, essentially, live forever.

The 10-year project is led by Peter Kazansky, a professor of optoelectronics. He and his team recently inscribed the complete human genome-which involves describing all three billion base pairs of DNA onto a nanostructured or "five-dimensional" memory crystal the size of a coin.

The crystal is made from fused quartz, one of the most stable materials on Earth.

Researchers used ultra-fast lasers to inscribe data into self-assembled nanostructured voids within the silica (hence "5D").

This kind of material is called a "Superman crystal" because of its ability to withstand extreme temperatures (of up to 1,000 degrees Celsius), cosmic radiation, and a direct impact force up to 10 tonnes per cm2 (for reference, the great white shark has a bite force of about 1.8 tonnes).

Kazansky and his team published their first paper on their new data storage method in 2014, in the journal Physical Review Letters. It took them another 10 years to fit the genome onto a single unit.