It follows if a film we watch consists of vision and audio it can convey an entire life or whatever. The next question is how big would such a record be. Depending on the resolution the video, recording at a rate of 320 by 240 pixels, on a digital medium, be it video tape, film or memory stick, it only needs something like 10 megabytes of memory per minute. If you spend 7 hrs asleep you spend 17 times 60 or roughly 1000 minutes daily. This means in a day you could video your life and only need 10 gigabytes of memory. In a year this is 365 times that or 3.5 terrabytes. In an average lifetime it would be 70 times that about 222 Terrabytes.

 

Now when you look at capacity of fibre optic cables a 22 core cable is capable of 2150 Terrabytes in a second. Bearing in mind the entire internet is thought to be 4000 exabytes or 1024 times 1024 Terrabytes. This makes you wonder if that is the amount of information in a refined beam of light just how much information can a light beam from the sun contain. Thus more than the entire internet could be contained in a one second burst of light from a source like the sun.

 

The speed of light is 3 *8 to the power of 10 metres per second. The size of an atom is 10 to the power of minus 10. In other words light travels through an atom in 1 times 10 to -16 of a second. To put this another way the straight distance of light passing through an atom is approximately the amount of light I used in my measure of the size of the internet etc. Put another way light will travel through 3*10 to the power of 18 atoms in one second. Ergo each atom contains the reciprocal of that. An exabyte is 1k * 10 to the power of 18. Again working on the adage there is no such thing as a vacuum and others like “nature abhors a vacuum” a reasonable conclusion is the space between atoms is filled with light energy. So the question then becomes how much can the atom contain. The mathematics may not be precise but the logic seems to be reasonable.

 

There is a further piece of technological advance know as OSL or optically stimulated luminescence. Here the light held within grains of minerals is subjected to infrared and this allows scientists to estimate when these grains last saw the light of day.

This demonstrates that it can only be a matter of time before we can capture and analyse that very same light to see what it can reveal What is the memory of  the light where it is permanently trapped in any material. The biggest worry is that if once released is that then lost or merely transferred.

We clearly with OSL we have the power and technology to reveal this from the light from the past. We also have the technology to piggy back data onto controlled laser light. We then use fibre optics using that light’s power and speed to transmit information in the present. If we continue discovery and technological development at the current and ever speeding rate logically we will one day be able to read the light from the past to determine what it can reveal. Who knows where this will take us. Forensic examination of the past could be a dangerous but powerful tool. Furthermore the very light held within an atom may be able to be shared to those surrounding it. Thus an entire life may be able to generate or even replicate itself atom by atom.