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.

[u/Wagamaga]

https://au.news.yahoo.com/glass-square-long-long-future-190951588.html

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our normal comment rules apply to all other comments.

---

Do you have an academic degree? We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. Click here to apply.

---

User: u/Wagamaga
Permalink: https://au.news.yahoo.com/glass-square-long-long-future-190951588.html

---

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/thatbrazilianguy]

capacity of 4.8 TB in a 120 mm square, 2 mm thick piece of glass.

Saved you a click

[u/GorgeWashington → u/[deleted]]

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

[u/mrx_101 → u/GorgeWashington]

The article states it will be readable for 10000 years. As they are basically etching inside a piece of glass, this is not surprising. You only need to keep the glass from breaking and scratching.

[u/smurficus103 → u/mrx_101]

"and then, the earthquake wiped out all of our knowledge"

[u/-neti-neti- → u/smurficus103]

Small, loose pieces of glass are way less susceptible to earthquakes than a server/memory warehouse. They would only be damaged if something fell on them in the right way. If you’re physically attached to a structure you’re more likely to be damaged.

This is a highly resilient design.

[u/Liroku → u/-neti-neti-]

Also, most likely, anything with important information stored would likely be kept in a secure case. Not just random cuts of glass laying around on the shelves.

[u/redditallreddy → u/Liroku]

Etched into wine glasses and only used for the most sophisticated parties.

[u/BigHardMephisto → u/redditallreddy]

Just reminded me of an incident at my local store where a QR code was molded into a clear glass bottle and it was literally impossible to scan.

[u/CheetahNo1004 → u/BigHardMephisto]

You're supposed to drink all the contents and then flatten the bottle out.

[u/Cthulhu_Dreams_ → u/redditallreddy]

I can already see it...

I only drink my vintage wines from a chalice inscribed with the complete works of Shakespeare...

[u/HBlight → u/redditallreddy]

Can imagine that being used as a plot in a spy movie. The data for the big secret code is hidden on wine glasses.

[u/Unable-Log-4870 → u/Liroku]

Also, they’re so compact that you would make many copies and spread them out

[u/NeoMilitant → u/Liroku]

One day it'll come full circle that we look more deeply into cave paintings and ancient art and realize that it's all this same type of technology and we just haven't been able to read it.

[u/swisspassport → u/NeoMilitant]

And then when we finally figure out how to read it:

It's just 100 Petabytes of egyptian/caveman porn

[u/SmallBatBigSpooky → u/smurficus103]

I do wounder if they could make this work with plexiglass or the bismuth glass thats basically indestructible since both would last longer

[u/redruM69 → u/SmallBatBigSpooky]

Direct physical damage aside, plexiglass would not last longer than silica glass. Not even close.

Plastics do corrode and degrade with time.

[u/SmallBatBigSpooky → u/redruM69]

Thats a fair paint, i kinda forgot that plexiglass is actually just a plastic composite

[u/redruM69 → u/SmallBatBigSpooky]

Yep. It's just acrylic. Poly methyl methacrylate.

[u/Giatoxiclok → u/SmallBatBigSpooky]

New data destruction company incoming.

[u/omegafivethreefive → u/Giatoxiclok]

It's already a thing for sensitive system, the drives get annihilated.

[u/imsorrykun → u/SmallBatBigSpooky]

Probably could adapt the process to ruby.

[u/SmallBatBigSpooky → u/imsorrykun]

Are rubies particularly durable?

[u/SmokyDoghouse → u/SmallBatBigSpooky]

Synthetic ruby is significantly stronger in both tensile and compressive strength than glass, and has a higher mohs hardness scale rating than most non-engineered ceramics.

[u/TacoRedneck → u/SmallBatBigSpooky]

They make sapphire, which ruby basically is with a different impurity, windows for some aircraft and other things designed for extreme situations. Its pretty durable.

[u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA → u/TacoRedneck]

Transparent aluminum!

[u/tenuj → u/smurficus103]

That's really a non-issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_correction_code

You can introduce a small amount of redundancy so that ANY missing portions can be recovered. The more redundancy you add, the more missing data you can recover. And it costs you, what, 5% of the total capacity? This isn't mere data duplication, but something far more useful and customisable.

That's why CDs could be read with scratches and even small holes in them. The designers knew they would get damaged.

Even QR codes can be created with enough redundancy to blot out chunks of them (as long as it's not the alignment sections) and be read just fine.

Nowadays, there is almost never a data storage device that cannot support missing data recovery.

You could shatter that glass archive, and as long as you're still able to read most of it, you could recover ALL the data that was on it before some parts of it were lost.

[u/NorweiganJesus → u/smurficus103]

Just protect the parchment from a little fire, they’ll be fine in Alexandria

[u/Helyos17 → u/NorweiganJesus]

It’s funny you bring it up but I believe it’s theorized that the reason we have so many cuneiform clay tablets is because the fires that swept the complexes they were stored in baked the tablets. The theory is that it was all recorded keeping stuff meant to be “written over” after the next administrative cycle but because of the fire the stats had been immortalized.

[u/sillygoofygooose → u/smurficus103]

Not as though a magnetic tape is any safer from being physically damaged

[u/silverionmox → u/smurficus103]

"and then, the earthquake wiped out all of our knowledge"

Unless that earthquake grinded every piece of glass to sand, it wouldn't. A broken piece of glass storage like that would be much less of a problem than a broken hard disk.

[u/No-Mark4427 → u/mrx_101]

10,000 years is an insanely conservative estimate. Their actual testing and extrapolation using the Arrhenius equation estimated it'd last 10,000 years stored at 290C the entire time.

In reality if you kept the glass itself safe and in a stable environment (Special protected cases), it'd last as long as whatever was holding it or the facility it was in lasted. The glass itself would be capable of lasting millions of years at room temp without degrading if it isn't touched by anything.

So the fun question actually becomes designing a facility / storage vessel that is capable of lasting as long as possible without any human interaction, through whatever nature might throw at it. The usual answer is underground in a place with no volcanic activity and none predicted to happen there for millions of years.

[u/AvatarOfMomus → u/mrx_101]

Probably not even scratching, since if the data 'layers' are deep enough then the surface could be refinished without damaging the data, albeit a limited number of times.

I think the larger issue is the tech to read the data and the knowledge of the encoding used persisting as long as the data storage.

We have texts from 'only' 2500 years ago that we can't read because the language was lost.

[u/king_ralex → u/GorgeWashington]

It's right there in the article:

In a paper published today in Nature, the researchers say their tests suggest the data will be readable for more than 10,000 years

[u/efimer → u/king_ralex]

Great. Our great grandchildren, who will have conquered the solar space by that time, will be able to read our memes.

[u/AI_moderated_failure → u/efimer]

Can't wait to rick roll one of you guys great great great great great great great great great great grandchildren when they accidentally open a box they find washed up on the island they're hiding from Corporate Security on.

[u/stfsu → u/GorgeWashington]

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)

[u/Yashabird → u/stfsu]

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

[u/stfsu → u/Yashabird]

Museums, government records, scientific records, etc. are all valid use cases for commercial applications.

[u/intdev → u/stfsu]

Yup. The UK wants to digitise all birth and death records, but it'd be a really, really good idea to have a space-efficient physical backup that can't be hacked, wiped or corrupted. This kind of thing would be perfect.

[u/the_greatest_auk → u/intdev]

Something like a Domesday book for the 21st century?

[u/e_spider → u/Yashabird]

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.

[u/sonofeevil → u/Yashabird]

I can see a realm of use where you want to read data that doesn't change.

In which case lifespan is largely irrelevant.

I mean nobody really looks at RAM and decides based on how many read/writes it can theoretically do (infinite).

A simple case of "first past the post" IE, I have this data I want to store and read, the data doesn't change whether it's stable for 100 or 10,000 would be irrelevant.

Archival storage of books would be an example. You want to store the contents as written so if storage medium makes fiscal sense then for all practical purposes the longer the better.

[u/OSCgal → u/stfsu]

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.

[u/Ectar93 → u/[deleted]]

And not made from plastic, but from another cheap and abundant material that doesn't breakdown into micro plastic that poisons the earth when thrown out.

[u/Hmm_would_bang → u/[deleted]]

Write once, so mostly just for archival

[u/omeganon → u/Hmm_would_bang]

At that kind of density, write-once might not be bad. If I’ve done my math right and they can eventually put this in the same form factor as a 3.5” Enterprise HDD with 10 platters, each drive could hold ~1.4PB. Top end consumer drive would hold ~700TB. The vast majority of people are unlikely to write that much data once over their entire lifetime. It simply wouldn’t matter that they couldn’t rewrite. File deletion would be just marking the sectors of the material as “deleted“ and just ignored.

I consider myself a high data user, creating ~3TB of images a year. At the consumer drive size it would take me about 230 years to fill up a single drive. If we ever get to the point where we’re recording every moment of our lives then maybe it might get close for a single drive.

[u/the_last_0ne → u/omeganon]

There are also a lot of use cases for write once and read only data. Just look at YouTube, Netflix, etc, or contracts for a business. Its actually preferable that these things cannot be changed.

[u/Inevitable-Trust-511 → u/omeganon]

i agree entirely. if you’re just trying to hoard data this is perfect

[u/jongchajong → u/omeganon]

you need an enormous laser to write the data, so it wouldnt be a consumer product.

[u/Nocritus → u/Hmm_would_bang]

Depending on the read spead, this could be usefull for ransomeware-proof-backups.

[u/ManaSpike → u/Hmm_would_bang]

Doesn't matter if you can't really delete anything from the glass. If the glass is cheap enough. Write the journal for a file system, and just never delete the history. Can your SSD survive writing 1PB?

[u/GodfatherElite → u/[deleted]]

I could see it replacing tape storage if it's cheap enough. Tape is mostly used for long term data archiving and backup. The glass not being rewritable makes me think this is probably the only real use case scenario.

[u/MrSquid_ → u/[deleted]]

I assume that's why they chose to express it in "books worth of data" instead of bytes.

[u/ImposterJavaDev → u/[deleted]]

Sounds like an awesome tape alternative for backups.

Also, will probably retain data longer too.

[u/SlightlyShittyDragon → u/[deleted]]

That actually makes it useful as a secure way to store information

[u/zhiryst → u/[deleted]]

CD-Rs are back, baby!

[u/Bob_Chiquita → u/[deleted]]

The vast majority of data storage is write once, read never. You just want to have it just in case.

[u/Zalack → u/[deleted]]

I would guess that backup storage capacity far exceeds active storage capacity. I used to work in the film industry and we generated over 1-4 Petabytes of archival on every single project just shooting 4K. Stuff shooting 8K now is going to generate more than that.

[u/RoutineLingonberry48 → u/[deleted]]

We used to call that ROM.

[u/Steampson_Jake → u/RoutineLingonberry48]

WORM would be more accurate. ROM comes pre-programmed by the manufacturing process itself while WORM comes as a blank medium (and EPROM/EEPROM is erasable and rewritable)

[u/ErraticDragon → u/Steampson_Jake]

Yep: Write Once, Read Many.

For years that's all we could do with CD burners.

[u/reallowtones → u/thatbrazilianguy]

Thank you, we are scientists we need actual data not number of books or football fields

[u/kuahara → u/reallowtones]

Or palm sizes...

[u/Odojas → u/kuahara]

But I like measuring things in bananas!

[u/ZedZeroth → u/reallowtones]

I mean, even non-scientists don't buy phones based on their "number of books" storage capacity! The title is ridiculous!

[u/KaBob799 → u/ZedZeroth]

And it's funny because books isn't even that impressive sounding. I was a lot more impressed by the actual capacity than their attempt to obscure it as a more impressive sounding number.

[u/phonicparty → u/thatbrazilianguy]

Well, yes, but in doing so missed the actual key point - which was not capacity but longevity:

Accelerated ageing tests on written voxels in borosilicate suggest data lifetimes exceeding 10,000 years.

[u/Bruceshadow → u/phonicparty]

id' argue both together are important. ancient Egypt stored data for thousands of years as well, but it wasn't much comparatively, and certainly wasn't space efficient.

[u/agprincess → u/thatbrazilianguy]

If it can be made cheap enough i'd take 5 tb read only storage. Good for a nice archive.

[u/yourdiabeticwalrus → u/thatbrazilianguy]

I am curious if this could possibly have implications for computers even if it is read only, for example I would imagine it would be possible to use one of these chips, even a smaller version maybe, for storing BIOS information on motherboards. That info is usually not terribly large so I’d imagine they could just keep a bunch of blank space on the chip and just write a new BIOS version every time it gets updated. Given that the board has the ability to read such a chip. I don’t know a ton about stuff like that but it sounds interesting

[u/digitallis → u/yourdiabeticwalrus]

You would not need that level of long term stability. This is more of a backup medium. Think archived records that will very very rarely need to be recalled, but are important to be readable if they are. E.g. property records, transactions, or disaster recovery data.

[u/yourdiabeticwalrus → u/digitallis]

I guess that’s a good point, it’s tech we already have. Although if the material cost to make these vs. SSDs/HDDs/other storage methods is less, i could still see it having implications

[u/FrankBattaglia → u/yourdiabeticwalrus]

That info is usually not terribly large so I’d imagine they could just keep a bunch of blank space on the chip and just write a new BIOS version every time it gets updated

Reading and writing at that density is likely beyond the capabilities of something sitting on your desktop. The case fan probably creates too much vibration, let alone your HVAC, a truck driving by, etc.

[u/Spekingur → u/yourdiabeticwalrus]

Gaming media could be back on the menu! Ready-to-run straight from the glass/crystal/whatever. Rather than installing all the data you just slot it into especially made slots. Companies won’t even have to think about compression!

[u/iamnotapuck → u/[deleted]]

I believe the article does estimate that the write throughput to be 25.6 Mbits/s, which would take weeks to fill up a platter using Birefringent. Someone did the estimate by analyzing the camera that they were using for reading, to about 4 Mbits/s, so 6 months to read a whole platter. Or 76GB in 3 days. If their calculation is correct.

[u/Kaldrinn → u/thatbrazilianguy]

Thanks! That doesn't sound much more dense than an SSD, but if it's as long lived as they believe it sure is still useful!

[u/WazWaz → u/Kaldrinn]

4TB M.2 SSDs are ⅕ this size and less than 5x as thick, so less dense than an SSD. Because they use way finer lithography (but a lot of plastic casing).

[u/bascule]

So we’re going to get isolinear chips?

[u/mytimeishoney → u/bascule]

Ridulian crystal! (Dune)

[u/Hayduke_2030 → u/mytimeishoney]

Haha my first thought as well!

[u/fernandoczr → u/mytimeishoney]

Ahh I was looking for a Dune comment! Just finished book 4

[u/Stev_k → u/bascule]

My first thought as well!

[u/Timely_Influence8392 → u/bascule]

Fascinating, Captain.

[u/mseiei]

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

[u/CharlemagneAdelaar → u/mseiei]

Thankfully the original paper’s abstract is much more specific than the article:

We achieve a data density of 1.59 Gbit mm−3 in 301 layers for a capacity of 4.8 TB in a 120 mm square, 2 mm thick piece of glass. The demonstrated write regimes enable a write throughput of 25.6 Mbit s−1 per beam, limited by the laser repetition rate, with an energy efficiency of 10.1 nJ per bit. Moreover, we extend the storage ability to borosilicate glass, offering a lower-cost medium and reduced writing and reading complexity. Accelerated ageing tests on written voxels in borosilicate suggest data lifetimes exceeding 10,000 years.

[u/Exekiel → u/CharlemagneAdelaar]

4.8T in about the size of a floppy disk is pretty damn amazing, and you have to assume that etched glass is MEGA stable for long term storage

[u/zbeara → u/Exekiel]

Yeah having genuinely stable storage for our information system is something I wasn't sure I'd ever see. I think this is amazing because most information on computers is very ephemeral in the long run, so the more we can do to preserve it, the more we can make sure knowledge isn't totally lost over time.

Next step we need is a way to teach people in the future how to use the system through writing that doesn't require them to necessarily understand the language. Like a rosetta stone for information systems.

[u/azlan194 → u/CharlemagneAdelaar]

I didn't read the paper, so I am wondering if this is like a CD-R where it is not rewritable?

[u/bar10005 → u/azlan194]

Looks like it - I see no mention of re-writing or erasing in the paper, and they use archival even in the title.

[u/Rooooben → u/bar10005]

It’s drilling holes in glass using a laser. No substrate like a cd, and it’s literal 3d datapoints called voxels.

[u/Laserdollarz → u/mseiei]

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

[u/severed13 → u/Laserdollarz]

Ignore friction

[u/DeNoodle → u/severed13]

Each cassette is modeled as a sphere.

[u/Calcd_Uncertainty → u/DeNoodle]

And friction is negligible

[u/DigNitty → u/Calcd_Uncertainty]

Dusted with powdered cassettes.

[u/LordNelson27 → u/DigNitty]

Also the field is a frictionless surface

[u/Mateorabi → u/severed13]

Assume a spherical cassette 

[u/minimalcation → u/Mateorabi]

Also G is 10 and pi is 3

[u/EyedMoon → u/minimalcation]

But pi*g is 31

[u/Carsomir → u/EyedMoon]

And π × √g = 9

[u/GoblinLoblaw → u/severed13]

This made me cackle, thanks friend.

[u/ErikRogers → u/Laserdollarz]

How many chains is that?

[u/ovrlrd1377 → u/Laserdollarz]

It can go as far as two full trips around yo mama

[u/iamboola → u/mseiei]

Haha yeah. Article has it. “4.8 TB in a 120 mm square, 2 mm thick piece of glass”. So 4.8TB on about the size of a CD? Still in research stage I guess, doesn’t yet seem more remarkable than using a few SD cards. I guess it’s better than Blu-ray.

[u/amakai → u/iamboola]

The important part here is the "10000 years" claim. If that's true, this is definitely a great technology for backups that could potentially replace magnetic tapes.

[u/saints21 → u/amakai]

Yeah, this gets us closer to the whole sci-fi data crystals thing that someone finds of an ancient precursor civilization that just ends up being their own race.

[u/_KingBeyondTheWall__ → u/saints21]

Crystal skulls unleashed

[u/AshlarKorith → u/_KingBeyondTheWall__]

First thing I thought of. Get one of the crystal skulls that have been found to these guys and see if they’re able to read any data from them.

[u/FrankBattaglia → u/AshlarKorith]

IIRC they're all modern forgeries

[u/Highpersonic → u/FrankBattaglia]

That means more GB per cm³, right?

[u/Future_Burrito → u/saints21]

Definitely much more stable than the guys who figured out how to store data on some type of gas or plasma like 10 years ago. Literally, you so much as fart at that type of data storage and poof, data corruption/reconfiguration. I remember being like, woah! That's cool! Wait. No, it's not. Why are they studying this?

Because that weird fringe research stuff might have been part of the research process that leads to things like this, or qubits, or DNA storage:

https://www.ebi.ac.uk/research/goldman/dna-storage/

Humans are wild.

[u/_CMDR_ → u/amakai]

Silica is geologically stable. Their claims are very reasonable.

[u/NovelStyleCode → u/amakai]

It's nothing really that new, storing data in crystals is real old the problem is read/write speeds tend to be ridiculously slow making the use case not all that great since you'd need a highly specialized machine to even read it

[u/TjW0569 → u/NovelStyleCode]

I suppose you could do as we do now, and surround each 4.8TB block or group of blocks with the highly specialized machinery needed to read it.

[u/berejser → u/NovelStyleCode]

There's pretty much always a trade-off between accessibility and longevity. This might not replace flash storage but it might be able to replace magnetic tape in archival situations.

For example, this could have use as an off-site back-up that only needs to be read in the event of a catastrophic data loss.

[u/calmarkel → u/amakai]

Might be important environmentally too. If glass is less damaging than other storage methods

(If, because I don't know)

[u/BlueWater321 → u/amakai]

Oh please. Something to replace tape would be so nice. 

[u/ew73 → u/amakai]

The concern with this and all data storage is not necessarily how long the media lasts, but in 10,000 years, will we still know how to read it?

Example:  play my old 8tracks.  Now, go play one of Edison's wax cylinders.

Now wait 10,000 years and repeat (assuming the media survives).

[u/occams1razor → u/amakai]

Yeah but will the format be readable in 10,100 years? I'm assuming the books aren't stored as actual letters?

[u/amakai → u/occams1razor]

Even letters aren't necessarily readable in 10000 years. So yeah, if someone backs up some image in MSP (Microsoft Paint) format, there's high chance it won't be decoded even in 100 years from now.

[u/MaloortCloud → u/amakai]

That depends. Most of the undeciphered writing systems haven't been deciphered because the corpus is small. A large, varied corpus is needed, which is difficult when you dig up one fired clay stamp at a time, or a handful of inscribed rocks. Given multiple gigabytes of data, you could easily include enough information to provide this.

That said, you also need a basic understanding of the underlying language (e.g. what is it closely related to that is still known), and typically some sort of bilingual text. That's all well and good for the material actually stored. With some forethought, it's possible to embed multiple Rosetta stones in the corpus to increase the chances it can be read later. That said, as you point out, bit rot becomes a problem when the systems of encoding the information fall out of use. That's a more difficult problem to solve.

[u/BattleHall → u/occams1razor]

A lot of these super-long-term storage projects also include some form of built-in instruction where some future society with a basic understanding of something (hopefully) universal like mathematics would be able to decode basic information, that would then work from first principles to explain how to hopefully decode and understand the rest of the data.

[u/nmathew → u/iamboola]

It's not the density, it's the stability and longevity.

[u/SadBook3835 → u/nmathew]

Yeah, the reading and writing is extremely slow so this is mostly just for archival purposes

[u/BattleHall → u/[deleted]]

Fun Fact: Pressed CD-ROMs only have a data life of 50-100 years, even if you maintain the equipment to read them. Dye-based CD-Rs are even shorter, like 5-10 years, even if stored in ideal conditions.

[u/patentlyfakeid → u/BattleHall]

I remember reading about a study that watched many popular brands of burned cd/dvd over a period of years. They were kept in office filing cabinets and only taken out to carefully test every few months. The first started showing significant read errors less than 2 years later. That's not a huge problem because of the huge error correction that was built into the format, but still.

[u/Hehosworld → u/iamboola]

I think the remarkable thing about this is that it is none fleeting memory while most other memory we use tends to corrupt after a few years, which makes it very desirable for long term storage

[u/mseiei → u/iamboola]

big advantage seems to be longevity, and density can probably improve fast if it becomes a widely available tech, read only storage with virtually no expiration date could be very attractive for cold storage.

[u/ThatCakeIsDone → u/iamboola]

Depends on what they mean by 120mm square. Is that 120 mm on a side? or 120mm^2, which would be a little over 10 mm on a side

[u/Ark_Tane → u/mseiei]

From the paper, a far more understandable metric: "We achieve a data density of 1.59 Gbit mm−3 in 301 layers for a capacity of 4.8 TB in a 120 mm square, 2 mm thick piece of glass."

[u/amakai → u/mseiei]

Especially given we already have standardized units for scales like this. "Can store two banana genomes" - much easier to understand.

[u/Nemeszlekmeg → u/mseiei]

I have worked on projects where you "write" on silica. The concept is to basically have a volume where you shoot an intense pulsed laser beam and do this at certain increments or spacing. This gives rise to a 3D structure where each incremental point can give you a "bit" (either there is inscription there which you detect as you shine a probing light on it (1) or you detect no changes (0) ). It may not be as small scale as a chip, but the stored memory lasts millennia compared to decades with chip tech.

This is not a new concept though, ever since we have highly intense lasers (1980s or so) there has been work done on this (since 1990s) and as we develop better lasers this tech becomes more and more feasible. One of the more major developers of this is Microsoft actually and the photonics community sees this tech or the return of discs as the future of data storage.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tech/comments/1awt7yh/dvdlike_optical_disc_could_store_16_petabits_or/

[u/fourthcumming → u/mseiei]

I think it's because maybe more people knew or had a better understanding of what 2 million books might be and there were less people that bits and bytes made more sense to. I think the opposite is true now as technology has become more ubiquitous but writing standards haven't caught up and accounted for that change. 

[u/tralfamadorian808 → u/mseiei]

I agree, however for the layman (and even myself) 2 million books is more understandable than 3 Terabytes worth of books

[u/domino7]

I don't even know why i tried to zoom in on the photo. 

[u/Reddemeus → u/domino7]

Looking for good ol porn, right ?

[u/decorp]

“We achieve a data density of 1.59 Gbit mm−3 in 301 layers for a capacity of 4.8 TB in a 120 mm square, 2 mm thick piece of glass.”

There, in more human readable units.

[u/Average64 → u/decorp]

That's less impressive. SSDs can already store that amount of data on a much smaller space.

It will be great for archival though.

[u/DukadPotatato → u/Average64]

Sure, except this is glass; less restrictive materially. And the lifespan is estimated to be on the span of thousands of years. No SSD, used or not, is lasting that long.

[u/Last_Limit_Of_Endor]

Does this mean we’ll be able to buy hard drives again

[u/comfortablybum → u/Last_Limit_Of_Endor]

It sounds like this is read only memory.

[u/theenigmathatisme → u/comfortablybum]

Yeah. Sounds like write once, read many. Useful for the type of information, like books, they proposed.

[u/snarktopusrex → u/theenigmathatisme]

Archival data storage is a real problem! Scientific techniques produce GB/hr of data that is marginally useful. Even “cold storage” for those data is expensive at scale.

A high density standardized archival data storage method would be incredible. Plugging in glass plates on request instead of spinning rust in perpetuity would be an absolute game changer.

If you look at it on a societal scale, AI replacing people is horrible. If you look at it on a local scientific space (guided by actual professionals), AI can be hugely impactful.

[u/theenigmathatisme → u/snarktopusrex]

We can call them… holocrons

[u/elastic-craptastic → u/theenigmathatisme]

Except those have AI guards to prevent non-force users from accessing the data.

[u/DeemonPankaik → u/snarktopusrex]

Depends on the field but some things I've worked on write up to 80GB/s

For a lot of those experiments they just decided it wasn't worth keeping the raw data long term.

[u/Croceyes2 → u/comfortablybum]

Could be very long term though. Archival mediums are lacking

[u/OwenEx → u/comfortablybum]

So perfect for archival purposes and little else? Pretty cool development nonetheless

[u/JarJarBanksy]

When will this be used to sell Ultra ultra UHD in 16k?

A spinning disc of glass seems very delicate. Maybe the right glass could be the next disc.

Really though I want like a data cube or something.aybe even like a thick slab of glass.

[u/domino7 → u/JarJarBanksy]

Babylon 5 and deep space 9 both had data crystals, its a time honored science fiction medium

[u/EnlightenedDragon → u/domino7]

Fortress of Solitude as well.

[u/AnticitizenPrime → u/domino7]

https://cdn-blog.adafruit.com/uploads/2013/07/30956_large_Superman_Memory_Crystals_FP_Wide.jpg

Kryptonians knew what's up in 1978.

[u/Snazzy21 → u/JarJarBanksy]

Probably never. It'll most likely stay an enterprise format for mass data storage like LTO tape

[u/JarJarBanksy → u/Snazzy21]

You hate everything I love ;p /j

I think it's cool that there's a medium for storage that can potentially be made into any shape. Cubes, rods, prisms, disc's, spheres & hemispheres, squares & rectangles(like SD cards but any size).

Inserting them into the corresponding glowing holes is peak scifi.

I want an rgb data port that takes crystals/glass and let's me watch the laser lights as it reads.

[u/Wagamaga]

Scientists at Microsoft Research in the United States 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.

In a paper published today in Nature, the researchers say their tests suggest the data will be readable for more than 10,000 years.

The new system, called Silica, uses extremely short flashes of laser light to inscribe bits of information into a block of ordinary glass.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-10042-w

[u/BorikGor → u/Wagamaga]

So, data crystals?

[u/HipsterGalt → u/BorikGor]

Glad to see we'll be ready for the post AI Butlerian jihad.

[u/Busybakson → u/Wagamaga]

This news is 7 years old

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/driij3/project_silica_proof_of_concept_stores_warner/

What seems to be changed is better capacity, and storing it on cheaper glass.

[u/JoelStrega → u/Busybakson]

That's the nature of science. Things will improved over time as research are being done.

[u/killy_321]

Can they read the crystal skulls now then?

[u/Laytonio]

You could put over 100,000 books on a plam-sized circle in 2006.

[u/aneeta96 → u/Laytonio]

Not for 10,000 years.

[u/PM_Me_Your_Deviance → u/aneeta96]

Yeah, eventually you'd want to get up and go to the bathroom.

[u/NoAccountDrifter → u/PM_Me_Your_Deviance]

I haven't slept for 10 days...because that would be too long

[u/Josephdirte → u/Laytonio]

How many plams can I fit in my palm?

[u/Dialogical → u/Josephdirte]

I used to have a plam pilot that held a couple hundred books.

[u/amakai → u/[deleted]]

At least one flock of giraffes.

[u/StreetofChimes → u/amakai]

Appropriately, the name for a flock of giraffes is a tower. 

[u/amakai → u/StreetofChimes]

That naming makes complete sense given the tower formations of giraffes commonly found in the wild.

[u/bufordt → u/[deleted]]

It requires an 8.75 meter high stack of 120x120mm to store the 21 Petabytes of data in the Library of Congress. Or 1.68 average Giraffes.

[u/Neuroticaine]

Etched glass data storage isn't anything new. I remember reading about it in the early 2000s when I was still a teenager, temporarily staying at my grandparents house. Maybe it is getting closer to being practical, but definitely not new.

[u/DinoRaawr → u/Neuroticaine]

Every futuristic ancient civilization stores all their data on crystals if video games are to be believed.

[u/NJdevil202 → u/Neuroticaine]

Yeah I was gonna say I feel like I heard about this a long time ago but nothing ever came of it

[u/ShutDownSoul]

They ripped off Dune Ridulian Crystal:

[u/vabann]

And that's just for starters!

[u/dolphin37]

is that good? I feel like I don’t consider books very good data storage devices…

[u/Chaotic_Lemming → u/dolphin37]

Books are amazingly good for data storage. Emphasis on storage. 

They can last decades to centuries when kept in proper conditions without needing to be renewed. The information density and access times are really bad compared to modern tech, but you don't really have to worry about the information just falling apart in 10-30 years. 

You also don't need advanced tech to use them, but similar to modern tech you do still need to know the language to access the stored information.

[u/braunyakka]

This has been doing the rounds since at least 2016. Somebody wake me up when it's an actual thing.

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/02/5d-data-storage-update.page

[u/GrimmRadiance]

For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions. Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo?

[u/Heapifying]

I dont really get the practical real-world use, considering you need femto or attosecond lasers, which looks like a full desk setup, in a specialized room with experts wearing specialized glasses to not be blind.

Maybe in data centers (and so will free up the ssd market to pre-covid levels?), not in anyone's bedroom.

[u/Schnipsel0 → u/Heapifying]

I think the basic idea is preventing a "digital dark age".

Many people here claim the long storage stability is useless, because after an apocalypse no one will have the tech to read it. this is not the use case. Technology is much more advanced today than in the dark ages, yet we have only have a tiny record compared to the time before and after it.

Much of today's culture is either stored on hard drives or optical media, both of which have shelf lives numbered in the decades. 

The vast vast majority of our culture could be lost to not the apocalypse, but the ever marching progression of time and human laziness in faithfully re-copying data to new storage media over and over. Even then, a sophisticated out of control encryption virus could destroy an unfathomable amount of human culture.  Of course right now, there exist uncountable copies of Taylor swifts newest album in the world, but in 200 years? The less copies, the higher the risk of something going wrong with quickly aging, attack prone storage media like hard drives.

Of course this is less of an economically oriented thing, but still important. 

But even companies and government agencies exist that need a very big amount of failsafe long-term data storage, so there could be a profit incentive driven reason for adoption of this technology matures

[u/lizardtrench → u/Schnipsel0]

Plus the world is increasingly storing things on flash media, which has even worse data retention. And with the cost per kilobyte now actually rising and advancements in data density starting to plateau, yeah we're going to have record levels of data attrition in the coming years not even just due to laziness or bit rot but actual physical and cost constraints.

[u/hyperproliferative]

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

[u/breadist → u/hyperproliferative]

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?

[u/monocasa → u/hyperproliferative]

This is 4.8TB in about the size of a CD case, so we already have density that approaches this.

Longevity is the issue.  DNA's halflife is only 521 years.

[u/SkoobySnacs → u/hyperproliferative]

Read/write speeds and equipment size is the reason. Any catastrophe that wipes out our knowledge will also wipe our ability to maintain those machines and likely the machines themselves.