Gadgetory

researchers have figured a way to store data on a single atom how much storage space is enough infinite storage of course and a study published in the journal Nature a team of physicists including some from IBM Research stored data on a single atom of the element home IAM placed on magnesium oxide at a temperature below 5 Kelvin or around - 268 degrees Celsius a special microscope uses electrical current to flip the atoms orientation one way or the other so that's either a 1 or 0 or a bit then that atom is read by measuring the atoms electromagnetic properties I know what you're thinking why didn't this work in magnetic hard drives before well if you keep cutting a magnet in half its polarity becomes more and more unstable that means data storage would be unreliable at best the stability the home iam survived several hours let's set the table to understand what's been done here right now a hard drive takes about 100 thousand atoms to store one bit of data so in theory you could fit 26 million songs on a drive the size of a penny that sounds amazing but don't expect your next phone to have this breakthrough just yet IBM researcher Chris Lutz says this work is not product development and that this research is to understand what happens as we miniaturize devices down toward the ultimate limit of the individual atom yeah yeah that's great but let's also said it could be decades away before we see this technology commercialized so there's something to look forward to for more information check out cnet.com Amaya's act hard i'll see you online