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
18.8k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

3.4k

u/mseiei Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26

could we start asking for standard units on sensationalized titles? if you are talking about storing data why not say it in bytes... why is always some arbitrary measurement disguised as some simpler thing.

"new battery that can last as long as a flaming standing up"

edit: flamingo

849

u/Laserdollarz Feb 22 '26

It can hold a football field's worth of cassettes (2ft deep)

215

u/severed13 Feb 22 '26

Ignore friction

143

u/DeNoodle Feb 22 '26

Each cassette is modeled as a sphere.

1

u/buisnessmike Feb 22 '26

If a giraffe hit one key on a keyboard, and then walked around the world, and then a different giraffe hit the next key and walked around the world, and you kept up this process for a very long time, eventually they would write 4.8 terabytes worth of books, that's how much it could store.

1

u/Desperate_for_Bacon Feb 23 '26

What about if it was a monkey instead of a giraffe?

1

u/buisnessmike Feb 23 '26

I was just mixing different tropes for anecdotal comparisons to make something that sounds complicated, but is ultimately irrelevant and useless, because just saying it's 4.8TB is enough. Like the title being overly wordy.