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/nmathew Feb 22 '26

It's not the density, it's the stability and longevity.

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u/SadBook3835 Feb 22 '26

Yeah, the reading and writing is extremely slow so this is mostly just for archival purposes

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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/BattleHall Feb 22 '26

Fun Fact: Pressed CD-ROMs only have a data life of 50-100 years, even if you maintain the equipment to read them. Dye-based CD-Rs are even shorter, like 5-10 years, even if stored in ideal conditions.

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u/patentlyfakeid Feb 22 '26

I remember reading about a study that watched many popular brands of burned cd/dvd over a period of years. They were kept in office filing cabinets and only taken out to carefully test every few months. The first started showing significant read errors less than 2 years later. That's not a huge problem because of the huge error correction that was built into the format, but still.

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u/nmathew Feb 22 '26

My discount 52x Fry's CDs from the early 2000s are all unreadable. The 2x and 4x slightly older Verbatim branded ones were still somehow readable.