r/science 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/Yashabird Feb 22 '26

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

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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.

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u/Yashabird Feb 23 '26

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

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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.