Data Storage

This person has helped lay the scientific foundations for 60TB 2TB dual-sided ultra-DVD discs... her work has shown that films of polymers can be created with a density of 100,000,000,000 bits per square centimeter (hence my rough estimate of 60TB per standard DVD size).

One 60TB disc could contain:
3 Libraries of Congress
7 video rental stores worth of video
1 lifetime of music (876,600 hours - does that much music even exist?)
130,000,000,000 web pages

Or, you know, buy 16 discs and have a petabyte to play with.

Can you imagine going your whole life just using one disc? LIKE TRON. Whoa.

ACK. I have horrible math and comprehension skills. I just realized it's BITS not BYTES. This density would really only produce a 2 TB dual sided platter... so it would take 10 such discs to hold one Library of Congress. Or two cool DataCubes...

I Feel Your Pain, Ira

Sometimes on Science Friday one can really hear Ira Flatow thinking: "man, that's such a dumb question" when he says "Hm, yes" to a caller...