Normally, DVD disks can hold only 4.7 GB of data, with Blu-ray units capable of going all the way up to 128 GB (BDXL 4-layer).
Now, however, researchers from Swinburne University claim to have developed a method of optically writing data on the disks in a way that allows for 1,000 TB to be stored on a single one.
Obviously, one petabyte is no mean feat, and definitely a goal worthy of striving towards.
In the picture above, the red beam writes the data, while the purple beam inhibits a portion of the red.
That way, the size of the 1 and 0 dots used to store data is made much, much smaller.
The key was getting around Abbe's limit, which states that a spot of light cannot be smaller than half its wavelength.
The beams shown above follow Abbe's law, but the partial blocking reduces the size of the dot to nine nanomenters.
I don't really need to list all the potential benefits of petabyte-level DVDs.