It’s . . . Superdisk

Computer researchers are always vying to cram just a little more information into a slightly smaller space. But a new technology just announced by scientists at AT&T Bell Laboratories may force the competition into playing catch-up for a long time to come. They have found a way to squeeze up to 45 billion bits of data onto a square inch of disk space — 300 times as much as an ordinary disk, and 100 times as much as the most advanced magneto-optical technology. The system could put two copies of War and Peace on the head of a pin.

More important, it could provide a way to store moving pictures, which require large amounts of data, on conventional compact discs, to be played back by computers or on television sets. A palm-size disk could hold 17 hours of programming. It works like other magneto-optical disks: a laser heats and magnetizes the disk surface, then another laser reads the magnetized spots. But while current systems use lenses to focus the laser, this one funnels the light through an optical fiber that has been stretched 1,000 times as thin as a human hair — a much tighter focus than a lens can achieve. The main stumbling block: the laser that reads these disks is too slow for commercial applications, so far.