Glass slivers that store data forever unveiled by Hitachi

TOKYO —

The Hitachi company unveiled a method of storing digital information on slivers of quartz glass that can endure extreme temperatures and hostile conditions without degrading, almost forever. And for anyone who updated their LP collection onto CD, only to find they then needed to get it all on MP3, a technology that never needs to change might sound appealing.

The volume of data being created every day is exploding, but in terms of keeping it for later generations, we haven’t necessarily improved since the days we inscribed things on stones, The possibility of losing information may actually have increased, noting the life of digital media currently available CDs and hard drives is limited to a few decades or a century at most. And the rapid development of technologies has resulted in frequent changes of data-reading hardware.

Provided a computer with the know-how to understand that binary is available simple enough to program, no matter how advanced computers become the data will always be readable, The prototype storage device is two centimeters square and just two millimeters thick and made from quartz glass, a highly stable and resilient material, used to make beakers and other instruments for laboratory use.

The chip, which is resistant to many chemicals and unaffected by radio waves, can be exposed directly to high temperature flames and heated to 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 Fahrenheit) for at least two hours without being damaged. It is also waterproof, meaning it could survive natural calamities, such as fires and tsunami.

The material currently has four layers of dots, which can hold 40 megabytes per square inch, approximately the density on a music CD, researchers said, adding they believe adding more layers should not be a problem. Hitachi have not decided when to put the chip to practical use but researchers said they could start with storage services for government agencies, museums and religious organizations.