Forget hard drives – Microsoft is working on a device that would store digital information on strands of DNA.
The machine uses bottles of chemicals to build DNA strands and a sequencer to encode them with data. The total cost of parts is only about $10,000.
DNA strands are capable of storing a staggering amount of information – Researchers say they could potentially fit a data center the size of a warehouse “into a set of Yahtzee dice”.
However, that’s a long way off. The current device took 21 hours just to encode five bytes of data – the word “hello”.
Does the idea of storing data on DNA freak you out? How could this be used in the future? Will we download movies and albums directly into our molecules?
