Researchers are developing a technique for recording up to 360TB of data on a glass disk that should be readable in a million years. The move, which works a bit like Superman’s data crystal, will probably be used to make sure that you never lose that valuable porn collection.

The team at the University of Southampton have demonstrated a way to record and retrieve as much as 360 terabytes of digital data onto a single disk of quartz glass in a way that can withstand temperatures of up to 1000 C and should keep the data stable and readable for up to a million years.

It is a document which will probably survive the human race and could have potential for low-cost, long-term, high-volume archiving of enormous databanks.

The quartz-glass technique relies on lasers pulsing one quadrillion times per second though a modulator that splits each pulse into 256 beams, generating a holographic image that is recorded on self-assembled nanostructures within a disk of fused-quartz glass.