Your Next Password Could Be a Piece of Plastic

Forget fingerprints or two factor authentication, scientists may have figured out a way to log into a computer with a synthetic molecule. In the new study published in the Cell Press journal Chem, researchers were able to store and decode an 11-character password encoded in the molecular makeup of a piece of plastic. The technology could help us meet our growing demand for energy-intensive long term data storage, the scientists suggest. “Molecules can store information for very long periods without needing power. Nature has given us the proof of principle that this works,” said study co-author Praveen Pasupathy, an electrical engineer at the University of Texas at Austin in a statement from Cell Press. “This is the first attempt to write information in a building block of a plastic that can then be read back using electrical signals, which takes us a step closer to storing information in an everyday material.” Traditional data storage methods have some major downsides. Not only is s ... Read full article.