Imagine a CD with a storage capacity not of 650 MB but 650 million MB. Such a storage capacity is theoretically possible because of experiments using individual atoms to store data.
But do not expect it soon; the gap between theory and practice is wide.
In 1959, physicist Richard Feynman pointed out that all the words written in the history of the world could be contained in a cube of material one tenth of a millimetre wide - provided those words were written with atoms.
Now, scientists have done just that, creating an atomic-scale memory by using atoms of silicon in place of the 1s and 0s that computers use to store data.
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