It doesn’t exist yet, and it may will be a very long time until it does exist, but scientists are already talking up the possibility of LASER-based hard drives.
The technology depends upon a LASER’s ability to switch the polarity of a magnet in just 40 femtoseconds (1/1,000,000 of a nanosecond). Though the results broached by Dr. Daniel Stanciu was seen as an impossibility in 2006, we since have corroborating evidence to show that the technique works.
Technological hurdles seen as a great impediment to the development of this technology have also fallen away. Research with Seagate in 2007 proved that inexpensive picosecond LASERs work just as well as the cripplingly pricey femtosecond lasers. The second hurdle, focusing a LASER down to sub-micron levels, was solved by a team in Strasbourg with a device that can focus photons to such a degree that it’s suitable for storage.
Now all we need is about 10 years, a couple billion in R&D, three square meals of hope per day, restful nights of pipedreaming, and it should be all ready to go!
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