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While we sit and wait for downloadable and streaming content to fully replace optical media, Sony, with the help of some talented folk at Tohoku University, is already working on the next iteration of Blu-ray. Those involved say that by harnessing a blue-violet laser, a disc could come crammed with up to 50 full-length movies or an entire TV series.
"This latest successful development is an all-semiconductor laser picosecond pulse source with a laser wavelength of 405 nanometers (1nm = one billionth of a meter) in the blue-violet region," Sony explains. "It is capable of generating optical pulses in the ultra-fast duration of 3 picoseconds (1 picosecond = one-trillionth of a second), with ultra-high output peak power of 100 watts and repetition frequency of 1GHz."
We love it when companies talk all geeky to us, and there's plenty of nerd-speak in the full press release. Put into plain English, this latest blue-violet laser is more than a hundred times stronger than the world's highest output value for conventional blue-violet, and barring any setbacks, will succeed the current Blu-ray format in the coming years.
Image Credit: Sony
Comments are closed on this article
baker269
July 27, 2010 at 11:12pm
If this were to actualy happen (yeah right) this would be a true next gen tech. both cd to dvd and dvd to blu-ray were some what lacking as a tech jump (amount of storage).
majorsuave
July 27, 2010 at 7:38am
Let`s call it Grape-ray
And, the captcha made me giggle: Bathtub family!
brockalee
July 27, 2010 at 6:26am
ROY-G-BIV
I guess they're nearing the end of the spectrum. Does that mean that optical will not be able to store more information beyond what we are now using these shorter wavelengths?
Pball1224
July 27, 2010 at 7:16am
400nm is the end of the visible light spectrum, but maybe Ultraviolet which ranges from 10nm to 400nm could be the next wave of optical disk advancements for some time. Though, if we can't see it, would we still call it optical?
brockalee
July 28, 2010 at 4:33am
Ahh - the invisible rays! I wonder if there will be a word play on that in the new optical iteration of optical drives and media.
bloodgain
July 27, 2010 at 11:17am
In Physics, optics covers both visible and invisible light, so we can still consider it optical.
While not specifically included in the field of optics, other forms of electromagnetic radiation follow similar principles. Not important to the discussion, just thought I'd include it.
