Suspended Information Energy Storage Crystal
Suspended Information Energy Storage Crystals
are an artificially grown layered crystal system, capable of suspending energy for an extremely long time, with the current estimation for meaningful data loss being within the realm of a billion years. Created by the Royal Engineering and Development Division, the Suspended Information Energy Storage Crystals are synthetically grown in layers, with a central core capturing the energy, a middle layer of resonating crystalline structures that slows down the dissipation of energy within the core, and finally an outer layer that serves as a protective lattice while also allowing for readability of the energy within. As data must be encoded during the growing process, it is currently impossible to modify it later, resulting in a read-only data format. In order to make modifications to the contained data, the crystal must be destroyed and grown anew. Regardless, the longevity and density of the information contained within makes the Suspended Information Energy Storage Crystals ideal for incredibly long-term data storage. In addition, the crystals can be grown to a desired size, rather than being constrained to limited sizes or shapes, allowing them to be adapted to the infrastructure.History
Proposed Alternative Uses
While strong, the outer protective later is not impervious to damage, as was demonstrated when a crystal shattered during interstellar transit, causing a small explosion within the cargo hold of the starship transporting the crystal. The resulting explosion damaged, but not destroyed several other crystals, resulting in a leakage of their contents. This discharge of energy has been proposed for usage as either a weapon or as a long-term energy storage device, both of which involve filling the crystal with as much energy as it can and intentionally shattering the outer crystal lattice in order to discharge the energy in a single burst. This has yet to been put into practice, but tests as to the maximum capacity of energy that can be safely stored within a Suspended Information Energy Storage Crystal are ongoing.
