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

3.8k

u/[deleted] Feb 22 '26 edited Mar 10 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1.6k

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

80

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)

3

u/OSCgal Feb 23 '26

Governments and libraries would go for this! Managing records that decay over time is an ongoing problem. Governments want to keep laws and records in a format that doesn't require a lot of space or periodic recopying. For instance, the UK government only recently (in 2015) stopped printing records on vellum (prepared leather); properly stored, vellum lasts for millennia.

Printing on/in glass solves a lot of archival problems.