On October 20, Hitachi Production Institute and Kyoto University announced the development of a new information storage technology, which can store information equivalent to 1~2 movies on a square glass sheet with a side length of 5 cm, and the storage time can reach more than 300 million years. This technology has developed the technology of using special lasers to drill holes in quartz glass, making the information storage capacity about 6 times as large as before. As a way to leave important information to future generations, this technology is expected to play a role in long-term preservation of government documents and cultural heritage, and is planned to be put into use in three years.

On the glass sheet with a side length of 5cm and a thickness of 8mm, information with a data volume of 6GB (1G is 1 billion bytes) can be written. The information storage capacity per unit area is the same as that of Blu ray discs.

At present, semiconductors and optical disks are commonly used to store information. Although quartz glass has good heat resistance and radiation resistance, it can only store a small amount of information before. The research team used a lens to adjust the direction of laser irradiation, making it possible to record information at the depth of the glass. The information on the glass can be read with a commercially available optical microscope.