Hitachi has unveiled a method of storing digital information on slivers of quartz glass that can endure extreme temperatures and hostile conditions without degrading, almost forever.
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.
Hitachi's new technology stores data in binary form by creating dots inside a thin sheet of quartz glass, which can be read with an ordinary optical microscope. 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 centimetres square by just two millimetres 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 1000 degrees Celsius for at least two hours without being damaged. It is also waterproof, meaning it could survive natural calamities, such as fires and tsunami. The developers believe data will survive unless this hard glass is broken.
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 organisations.
