In their earliest years of development, computers used mechanical gears and levers to store information. Today, researchers are exploring whether a material itself can hold onto information, storing memory in how it bends and springs back to its original shape.

Through new research published in Physical Review X, Ramathasan Thevamaran and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have discovered a material that takes this concept a step further: a foam made of carbon nanotubes that remembers exactly how hard it was squeezed, then returns to its original shape with no lasting damage.