ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

5D optical data storage

Alright kiddo, have you ever seen a DVD or a CD? They're flat, shiny disks that you can put into a machine and watch a movie or listen to music, right? Well, those disks store information in a really special way. They have tiny bumps and pits on them that a laser can read.

Now, imagine if we could make those bumps and pits even tinier and put even more of them on the disk. That's what scientists have been working on with 5d optical data storage. They use a special kind of laser to make really, really tiny dots on a disk. Each dot represents a tiny, tiny piece of information that can be read by the same kind of laser.

But what does 5d mean? Well, it's kind of like how you have three dimensions in the world around us - things can be tall, wide, and deep. In 5d, there are even more dimensions! It's like we can add two more things to measure - maybe the color of the dot and the way it reflects light. All of those things add up to five different dimensions that can hold information.

So 5d optical data storage is like having a really tiny, super-powered microscope that can read information on a disk that's as small as a fingernail. It's a really cool way to store lots of information in a really small space, which means we can keep storing more and more information without needing lots of big disks or hard drives.