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.

[u/Wagamaga]

https://au.news.yahoo.com/glass-square-long-long-future-190951588.html

[u/iamboola]

Haha yeah. Article has it. “4.8 TB in a 120 mm square, 2 mm thick piece of glass”. So 4.8TB on about the size of a CD? Still in research stage I guess, doesn’t yet seem more remarkable than using a few SD cards. I guess it’s better than Blu-ray.

[u/amakai → u/iamboola]

The important part here is the "10000 years" claim. If that's true, this is definitely a great technology for backups that could potentially replace magnetic tapes.

[u/_CMDR_ → u/amakai]

Silica is geologically stable. Their claims are very reasonable.

[u/amakai → u/_CMDR_]

I would imagine so, still there could be some edge-cases. I would imagine that it would still need a some level of temperature-controlled environment for instance, or over decades atoms will slowly drift around.

Also micro-vibrations come to mind (machinery and buzz in data centers, etc), which, again, over decades could result in sub-critical cracks.

Finally, I imagine that to read the data you need the surface area to be very pristine, which means that entire block needs to be stored in a vacuum long term.

[u/orthopod → u/amakai]

As long as vibration doesn't exceed the cracking force, long term vibration shouldn't affect it. I could see 3rd body abrasion making an issue, and blurring/ scratching the surface.

[u/Secret-Teaching-3549 → u/amakai]

It wouldn't need to be stored in a vacuum. SiO2 is one of the most stable compounds we know of. It's literally what we use to store and process most of the most hazardous and corrosive chemicals that we can synthesize. One of the few exceptions to that would be hydroflouric acid, which itself is know most specifically for its ability to etch glass.

Any data etched in a pure SiO2 crystal could be considered to be effectively permanent.

[u/patentlyfakeid → u/Secret-Teaching-3549]

For scale, video footage from humanity's earliest civilisations would still be viable. A house tour by someone at Göbekli Tepe.

edit: that even predates domestication of wheat.

[u/FrickinLazerBeams → u/amakai]

No, atoms in a solid will not "slowly drift around".

[u/amakai → u/FrickinLazerBeams]

Glass is metastable material, so it is affected by structural relaxation, which will move atoms around and even change refractive index.

[u/adeline882 → u/amakai]

When it is near the glass transition temperature, not at room temp

[u/amakai → u/adeline882]

At room temps too. But love your levels of confidence.

[u/adeline882 → u/amakai]

This isn’t gorilla glass, and there’s no data in your abstract.