US EditionMicrosoft Unveils Glass Storage System Lasting 10,000 Years
Microsoft's Project Silica uses femtosecond lasers and optical readers to store 4.8 terabytes in glass, with data stability tested for over 10,000 years at 290°C, says lead researcher.
- Microsoft Research's Project Silica demonstrated a glass-based system storing 4.8 terabytes in a 120 millimetres by 2 millimetres glass piece, with data stability estimated for more than 10,000 years.
- A decade of research showed decade-old physics principles, and Peter Kazansky's 2014 University of Southampton work established laser encoding of terabytes into glass, while Richard Black, Microsoft researcher, demonstrated a more practical system.
- Using femtosecond lasers, the team encodes data by etching 3D voxels in glass with birefringence or refractive-index changes and reads them via phase-contrast microscopy and a neural-network algorithm with error-correction bits and automated focal-plane imaging.
- The process proved repeatable and automated, so it supports robotically operated data facilities for national libraries, scientific repositories, and cultural records, with sustainability attributes of low energy and recyclability.
- Other actors—Cerabyte and Kazansky's SPhotonix—highlight wider industry and cultural interest, though questions remain about costs and capacity scaling to 360 terabytes.
83 Articles
83 Articles
This Tiny Glass Square Could Store 2 Million Books of Data For 10,000 Years
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.
Is this glass square the long, long future of data storage?
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.
Laser-Etched Glass Could Store Data For Millennia, Says Microsoft
In an age where everything lives on fragile hard drives, the idea is unsettling. Files vanish. Systems crash. So how do you preserve human knowledge for thousands of years—not just decades?Enter Microsoft’s bold experiment: storing data inside glass.Through its Silica project, researchers are using lasers to etch information into silica glass. Yes, actual glass plates, like a modern twist on old photographic negatives.The process sounds almost s…
According to a research team from Microsoft, a method has been developed to store large amounts of data for many thousands of years. For this, a thin piece of special glass could suffice.
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