The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun says, Hitachi, Ltd (Japan) and Kyoto University have jointly developed a technique to use quartz glass for data storage. This technique rivals the technique of Blu-ray Discs in recording density, but quartz glass can store data for up to 300 Million years compared to Blu-ray Discs only for about 1,000 years. Therefore, this technology can be used to store official documents, cultural heritage materials, etc.
1.5 GB of information. Its information is expressed in binary with four layers of dots (with a layer distance of 60 μm) etched by femtosecond (one quadrillionth second) laser and can just be read by an ordinary optical microscope. After the quartz glass is heated to 1000 ℃ and kept at this temperature for 2 hours, the data can still be stored in it.
To read the data, the optical microscope is needed to be focused on the lattices layer by layer. The quartz glass can store not only words and pictures, but also videos and their presentation description.
It is also reported that its current problem is how to reduce the recording time, as now it needs 2 months to record 1.5 GB of data. The research group has trial produced such a chip of 2 cm2, and it will be sent to the outer space in November with some images of the present Earth and human beings and the satellite researchers’ messages.