TWO years from now the world’s smallest optical disc will let your cellphone store five two-hour movies, squirrel away 25,000 digital photos or hoard 48 hours of MP3 music.
New Scientist learned last week that the electronics company Philips has been secretly researching the technology in Britain at its research centre in Southampton. It uses a miniature optical disc that records, plays back and erases data using the same precision blue lasers that are being developed for the next generation of high-definition video recorders.
The Philips disc has no catchy name yet, so the system is known as SFFO,…
