If you thought Blu-Ray and Holographic DVD's were impressive then read on as this new Melbourne developed process uses the same technology and hardware as our existing DVD standard.  This is not a new optical medium.

A team of researchers at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, have used nanotechnology to boost the storage potential nearly 10,000-fold compared to standard DVDs, according to a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

Discs currently have three spatial dimensions. By using gold nanorods, Gu and colleagues were able to add two additional dimensions, one based on the colour spectrum, and the other on polarisation.

A 10 layer DVD using this new technology, generates 1.6TB of data storage. 100 layers will generate around 16TB of storage.

The researchers are still working out the speed at which the discs can be written on, and say that commercial production is at least five years off.

They have signed an agreement with Korea-based Samsung, one of the world's largest electronics manufacturers.  More via The Age and Cnet.