MemoryStone

Berkeley researcher Alex Zettl and colleagues created a physical memory cell composed of an iron nanoparticle that can be moved back and forth in a nanotube. The position of the iron particle represents the state of the bit, which leads to very dense and highly stabile memory arrays, resulting in very long lifetime: Link How stable is stable? Here’s a chart that shows typical storage lifetimes vs bit density for a variety of storage media. As you can see, his stuff beats rock! (via Recent Advances in Nanotechnology May Lead to a Massive Increase in Memory Capacity)