100,000 in a disc???

A blank disc that can store two million photos and 100,000 songs will be available within 10 years, Melbourne researchers predict.

The team at Swinburne University of Technology yesterday revealed it had used nanotechnology to record information in five dimensions. Today's discs record in two or three dimensions.

This means DVDs could potentially hold up to 10 terabytes of data -- equal to 10,240 gigabytes, whereas the average disc now can store 4.9 gigabytes, the Australian Associated Press reported.

Dr James Chon, co-author of the research, which will appear in "Nature" magazine, said the new disc could hold 100,000 songs instead of fewer than 100, and the equivalent of 2,000 movies.

Professor Richard Evans, from the CSIRO's Molecular and Health Technologies division, said the technology would first be used in medicine, finance and government sectors.

"Things like medical imaging, with MRIs that generate huge amounts of data, will be where this is introduced first," the AAP quoted him as saying.

The research was conducted by Swinburne University of Technology's centre for Micro-Photonics, supported by a discovery grant from the Australian Research Council.

Bernama