In a groundbreaking scientific development, UK scientists on Thursday announced the development of a novel 5D “everlasting” memory crystal, where tech billionaire Elon Musk suggested storing “all of human knowledge”.

The 5D memory crystal is a revolutionary data storage format that can survive for billions of years. Unlike other data storage formats that degrade over time, 5D memory crystals can store up to 360 terabytes of information (in the largest size) without loss for billions of years, even at high temperatures.

“We should write all of human knowledge into these crystals,” said Musk in a post on X.

The technology can be utilised to create an enduring record of the genomes of endangered plant and animal species faced with extinction, said the team from the University of Southampton who stored the full human genome on the pioneering device.

The team hoped that the crystal could provide a blueprint to bring humanity back from extinction thousands, millions, or even billions of years into the future. The crystal can withstand the high and low extremes of freezing, fire and temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees Celsius.

“The 5D memory crystal opens up possibilities for other researchers to build an everlasting repository of genomic information from which complex organisms like plants and animals might be restored should science in the future allow,” said Professor Peter Kazansky at Southampton.

To develop the crystal, the team used ultra-fast lasers to precisely inscribe data into nanostructured voids orientated within silica — with feature sizes as small as 20 nanometres. The method of encoding uses two optical dimensions and three spatial coordinates to write throughout the material — hence the ‘5D’ in its name. The longevity of the crystals means they will outlast humans and other species. To test the concept, the team created a 5D memory crystal containing the full human genome. For the approximately three billion letters in the genome, each letter was sequenced 150 times to make sure it was in that position. The crystal is stored in the Memory of Mankind archive – a special time capsule within a salt cave in Hallstatt, Austria, said the team.