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Japan's Hitachi Ltd. has developed technology that can write data onto high heat- and radiation- resistant fused silica glass that is capable of storing data for up to 300 million years, local media reported Monday.
The electronics giant said a prototype chip created with the new technology and imbedded with information about planet Earth will be sent into space in November, the Asahi Shimbun reported Monday.
Working with Kyoto University, Hitachi researchers said the new technology records data with a density on par with the Blu-ray Disc digital storage format and is suited for long-term preservation of materials such as public documents and documents recording cultural heritage.
The technology involves an extremely thin laser beam that is fired at the fused silica glass in a short burst, creating a tiny bubble inside that is about one-1000th of a millimeter wide. The bubble acts as a unit of digital data.
The bubbles are lined up 0.003 millimeter apart in planes, and these planes are stacked in layers of 100 and are separated from one another by a space of 0.06 millimeter.
Researchers were able to record 1.5 gigabytes of data on a single piece of fused silica glass measuring 2.5 cm on each side and 8 millimeter thick. The data remained intact even after two hours of exposure to 1,000-degree heat. An optical microscope is used to read the data.
The research team developed a 2-cm-square prototype chip. The chip will take a ride into space aboard the Shinen 2, a micro- satellite that will orbit the sun in November. The Shinen 2 was developed by Kagoshima University, the Kyushu Institute of Technology and other organizations.
The micro-satellite will ride an H-2A rocket into space along with the Hayabusa 2 asteroid probe. The chip will be embedded with messages from satellite developers and others to be read by Earthlings of the far-flung future or possible intelligent extraterrestrials, as well as information on present-day Earth and the human species.
