TIL: A Teaspoon of DNA Can Store All The Data Humans Have Ever Generated

We have been on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years but it is estimated that the modern humans started evolving around 200,000 years ago. Since then we have completely changed and so has the world around us.



A large reason of the change in the world have been due to human activities, be it good or bad. In the process, we have created a lot of stuff making our historical footprint on Earth, a very, very large one.



We have generated so much data, that our modern technology simply can’t store all in one place in case anything were to happen to us, or most of us, so that those remaining could use it. 



A cloud computing company, EMC, estimated that there is approximately 1.8 zettabytes of data in the world, until 2011. (1 zettabyte = 1000 exabytes, 1 exabyte = 1 billion gigabytes)

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There is no way we can hold all of that in a single chip as shown in sci-fi movies. But scientists say, that the key to holding that much data easily and for thousands of years, may lie within life’s code itself.



It is estimated that 1 gram of DNA can store upto 455 exabytes of data. That means that to hold the 1.8 zettabytes, we would require only 4 grams of DNA, or about a teaspoon. 

That’s correct. All of human history, in a teaspoon. 

Now that would be high tech! Scientists have historically been able to code data in DNA but until recently it was reading the data that was proving difficult but recent developments in the field have made it far more easier to do so.



The major problem that still lingers is that of the costs involved. As this technology is explored more in the future, costs may drop and we could one day use this as a viable data storage method.




Source: https://qz.com/885745/2017-will-bring-a-new-triangle-of-instability-and-an-uprising-of-luddites/