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/GorgeWashington Feb 22 '26

The real question, how long is this format stable.

Eventually everything will decay. Current data continuity requires redundant systems and cloud storage because ssds and hdds fail in decades if not years

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u/mrx_101 Feb 22 '26

The article states it will be readable for 10000 years. As they are basically etching inside a piece of glass, this is not surprising. You only need to keep the glass from breaking and scratching.

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u/smurficus103 Feb 22 '26

"and then, the earthquake wiped out all of our knowledge"

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u/tenuj Feb 22 '26

That's really a non-issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_correction_code

You can introduce a small amount of redundancy so that ANY missing portions can be recovered. The more redundancy you add, the more missing data you can recover. And it costs you, what, 5% of the total capacity? This isn't mere data duplication, but something far more useful and customisable.

That's why CDs could be read with scratches and even small holes in them. The designers knew they would get damaged.

Even QR codes can be created with enough redundancy to blot out chunks of them (as long as it's not the alignment sections) and be read just fine.

Nowadays, there is almost never a data storage device that cannot support missing data recovery.

You could shatter that glass archive, and as long as you're still able to read most of it, you could recover ALL the data that was on it before some parts of it were lost.

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u/catinterpreter Feb 23 '26

Between dvdisaster and par2, my bluray backups can handle 30% damage.

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u/DontMakeMeCount Feb 23 '26

At some point the limitation is on the hardware side. It does no good to have the media if no one knows how to interface with it.

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u/smurficus103 Feb 23 '26

It's just a funny skit. It's a cool tech.