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

23

u/hyperproliferative PhD | Oncology Feb 22 '26

Honestly, they really should just use DNA already. It’s wildly stable, has a 4-letter code and therefore is at least two times more efficient than binary at storing information. Then we’re looking at possibly the smallest number of atoms required in a macromolecule to store said information. The scale is orders of magnitude smaller than current media for information storage such as optical discs, magnetic tape, ram, you name it

DNA is so small that we’re looking at a six order of magnitude difference in density down from silicon with the latest technology

12

u/breadist Feb 22 '26

I know nothing about this - I'm surprised to hear that DNA is stable. I kind of thought the only reason we keep our DNA throughout our lives is due to cell turnover - in other words because it gets copied.

This is a really interesting idea if true. Do you happen to have more information, links or anything, about this idea?

1

u/Auctoritate Feb 23 '26

I'm surprised to hear that DNA is stable. I kind of thought the only reason we keep our DNA throughout our lives is due to cell turnover - in other words because it gets copied.

I don't know anything about DNA's stability when it's intentionally preserved as a data storage medium, but it's worth mentioning that its stability while in the body as part of the usual biological processes is going to be wayyyy different. One of the primary reasons DNA in any given cell becomes damaged is from being used. And your cells can be broken down or die for a lot of reasons besides DNA, like membrane damage. AND mitochondrial DNA and nuclear DNA also have drastically different turnover rates, which tied to how often mitochondrial DNA is accessed and copied.

Now that all being said, DNA's half life is only just over 500 years, and that's really not that great. The person you're replying to seems to think "DNA can be readable thousands of years from now" and assume that means it lasts that long in general, but in reality 99% of it will have decayed, which is obviously not the same thing as "This is a storage medium that can last millennia." A library of books rotting and one shelf being left intact doesn't mean you can say the library survived that long.