
Eternal 5D data storage could record the history of humankind - bigblind
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-update.page
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mchahn
I wish they had explained how they utilize five dimensions in our three (or
four) dimensional world. I could understand if five "tracks" of data were
stored in a single physical stream, but that has nothing to do with
dimensions.

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kruffin
Searching for the paper mentioned in the article turned up this:
[http://www.orc.soton.ac.uk/fileadmin/downloads/5D_Data_Stora...](http://www.orc.soton.ac.uk/fileadmin/downloads/5D_Data_Storage_by_Ultrafast_Laser_Nanostructuring_in_Glass.pdf)

The five dimensions are in the first paragraph:

 _More recently self \- assembled nanogratings produced by ultrafast laser
writing in glass were proposed for the polarization multiplexed optical
memory, where the information encodi ng would be realized by means of two
birefringence parameters, i.e. the slow axis orientation (4th dimension) and
strength of retardance (5th dimension), in addition to three spatial
coordinates [3,4] ._

