Scientists recorded information 10,000 denser than Blue-Ray: 500 TB fit on a CD

The researchers said that their new method allows you to record information at a speed of 1,000,000 voxels.

or volume pixels per second. This is approximately 230 kb/sec. For comparison, 230 kilobytes is more than 100 pages of text.

Scientists have previously tried to useoptical data storage for transparent materials, but they were unable to find the most convenient method for fast and dense recording, so the technology was not used for real problems. 

The authors of the new work during the experimentused a femtosecond laser with a high pulse repetition rate to make small bumps with a nanostructure measuring 500 by 50 nanometers.

The researchers note that the laser did not recordinformation directly on the glass. On the contrary, laser radiation was used to enhance the near field, in which case the nanostructure would be formed by several weak light pulses. This approach helped the authors reduce the risk of damage that could occur due to heat. 

During the experiment, the researchers recordedin its own way, 5 gigabytes of text data onto a quartz glass disk. It was no different in size from a CD. Each voxel contained four bits of information, and every two voxels corresponded to one text character.

As a result, on a disc the size of a CDmanaged to fit 500 terabytes of data. The authors note that they are going to improve their system and reduce the time for recording such a volume of information to 60 days.

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