Imagine being able to store some 40,000 songs. Every waking play, you’re in for a treat as you’ll never get the same songs during shuffle. Well with that amount of songs you will require some 500,000 GB of capacity

Impossible last week but not in the future as there’s a breakthrough as scientists at the University of Glasgow have created a nanotechnology breakthrough that could increase storage capacity by 150,000 times

It’s all in the molecule-sized switch that’s at the heart of it all as claimed by the Glasgow scientists

Professor Lee Cronin at the University of Glasgow made a statement:

“What we have done is find a way to potentially increase the data storage capabilities in a radical way. We have been able to assemble a functional nanocluster that incorporates two electron donating groups, and position them precisely 0.32 nm apart so that they can form a totally new type of molecular switching device.

The key advantage of the molecule sized switch is information / transistor density in traditional semi-conductors. Molecule sized switches would lead to increasing data storage to say 4 Petabits per square inch.

This breakthrough shows conceptually that this is possible (showing the bulk effect) but we are yet to solve the fabrication and addressing problems.

The fact these switches work on carbon means that they could be embedded in plastic chips so silicon is not needed and the system becomes much more flexible both physically and technologically”

via source