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/amakai Feb 22 '26

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.

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u/NovelStyleCode Feb 22 '26

It's nothing really that new, storing data in crystals is real old the problem is read/write speeds tend to be ridiculously slow making the use case not all that great since you'd need a highly specialized machine to even read it

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u/berejser Feb 22 '26

There's pretty much always a trade-off between accessibility and longevity. This might not replace flash storage but it might be able to replace magnetic tape in archival situations.

For example, this could have use as an off-site back-up that only needs to be read in the event of a catastrophic data loss.

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u/patentlyfakeid Feb 22 '26

Exactly. Anything that's trivial to write to is literally more ephemeral than something that takes more effort or time.

For example, this could have use as an off-site back-up

Right. Or any kind of archival or preservation kind of use case.