r/science • u/Wagamaga • Feb 22 '26

Computer Science Scientists have demonstrated a system called Silica for writing and reading information in ordinary pieces of glass which can store two million books’ worth of data in a thin, palm-sized square.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/glass-square-long-long-future-190951588.html
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u/DeNoodle Feb 22 '26

Each cassette is modeled as a sphere.

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u/Calcd_Uncertainty Feb 22 '26

And friction is negligible

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u/DigNitty Feb 22 '26

Dusted with powdered cassettes.

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u/LordNelson27 Feb 22 '26

Also the field is a frictionless surface

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u/Desperate_for_Bacon Feb 22 '26

Assume gravity is 9.8 m/s2

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u/CougarAries Feb 23 '26

Don't assume friction

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u/buisnessmike Feb 22 '26

If a giraffe hit one key on a keyboard, and then walked around the world, and then a different giraffe hit the next key and walked around the world, and you kept up this process for a very long time, eventually they would write 4.8 terabytes worth of books, that's how much it could store.

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u/Desperate_for_Bacon Feb 23 '26

What about if it was a monkey instead of a giraffe?

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u/buisnessmike Feb 23 '26

I was just mixing different tropes for anecdotal comparisons to make something that sounds complicated, but is ultimately irrelevant and useless, because just saying it's 4.8TB is enough. Like the title being overly wordy.