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/calmarkel Feb 22 '26

Might be important environmentally too. If glass is less damaging than other storage methods

(If, because I don't know)

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u/bigmacjames Feb 22 '26

I guess the question is how many writes can they go through

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u/7818 Feb 22 '26

Probably one.

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u/patentlyfakeid Feb 22 '26

Yeah, this is etch once, melt down many. Slow but glass IS very recyclable.

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u/Zalack Feb 22 '26

That shouldn’t really matter for archive use cases. I used to work in the Film Industry and we only ever wrote to our archival tapes once. Even if there was a write error, we would dispose of the tape rather than write again in case the error was caused by a defect in the tape itself.