General Electric says it has achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology that will allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs.
The promising work by the G.E. researchers is in the field of holographic storage. Holography is an optical process that stores not only three-dimensional images like the ones placed on many credit cards for security purposes, but the 1’s and 0’s of digital data as well.The data is encoded in light patterns that are stored in light-sensitive material.
The holograms act like microscopic mirrors that refract light patterns when a laser shines on them, and so each hologram’s recorded data can then be retrieved and deciphered.Holographic storage has the potential to pack data far more densely than conventional optical technology, used in DVDs and the newer, high-capacity Blu-ray discs, in which information is stored as a pattern of marks across the surface of a disc. The potential of holographic technology has long been known.
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General Electric has unveiled its new 40-watt LED bulb that will last 25 times longer than incandescent bulbs. When used for three hours a day (the average used by Energy Star for comparing bulb performance), the GE 40-watt LED would last close to 23 years. At four hours per day, the average GE uses, it would last 17 years.
