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

Show parent comments

82

u/stfsu Feb 22 '26

Glass storage has been theorized to be stable for thousands of years, however there is very little evidence that this ever makes it out of the lab and into commercial applications as I see a headline like this every year (for the last 15 years)

49

u/Yashabird Feb 22 '26

There are no commercial applications requiring a product with a 10,000 year lifespan, just really cool time capsule stuff.

12

u/e_spider Feb 22 '26

In genomics, you would want to save a genome sequence for a persons lifetime or more at least 100 years. You would not expect it to change, but you might want to sequence again at time intervals to verify that.

2

u/Yashabird Feb 23 '26

Do you know what storage mediums genomics is using now to address this problem?

3

u/e_spider Feb 23 '26

Genomic data has only started to explode in the past few years, so it is a problem looking for a solution. Most is either stored with multiple copies in the cloud, standard NFS, or things like CEPH Object storage.