The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy stored on '5D Crystal' at the British Library

Researchers from the Zepler Institute for Photonics and Nanoelectronics have preserved a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on a '5D Memory Crystal' to mark 42 years of the iconic novel.

Curators of the British Library will be presented the crystal at a 42nd Anniversary event in London on Sunday.

The 5D technology, which was developed by a research team led by Professor Peter Kazansky, uses a short-pulse laser to write high density planes at various inclinations on a silica-based object.

The material was recognised by the Guinness Book of Records in 2014 to be the most durable digital storage medium, stable at room temperature for 300 quintillion years. Its data can survive at unusual levels of temperature, magnetism and cosmic radiation.

Its resilience to conditions found beyond our atmosphere saw a crystal containing the Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov sent into heliocentric orbit by Space-X in 2018.

Researchers can currently write 250 layers of micro-storage into the crystal, however The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been written - quite aptly- in just 42.

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