New research opportunities, a flood of scientific data and the future of data storage More than 60 years ago Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray image of DNA helped solve the structure of this important molecule. Today scientists at the world's largest laser, European XFEL, generate thousands of images every second. This data is used to unravel the structures and movements of viruses, nanoparticles, plasmas and magnetic materials. How do researchers store and analyse petabytes of data arriving at a rate of thousands of frames a second? And how could basic research into magnetism and materials pave the way to new data storage media for the future?