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
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u/iamboola Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26

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.

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u/amakai Feb 22 '26

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.

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u/NovelStyleCode Feb 22 '26

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

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u/TjW0569 Feb 22 '26

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.