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An amplified view of the research composition tools.(Image credit: Microsoft)
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Significant enhancements to Microsoft’s glass-centered data-storage innovation imply commonplace glassware, such as that utilized in cooking implements and oven entries, is capable of safeguarding terabytes of data, with the details enduring 10,000 years.
The technology, which has remained under growth within the “Project Silica” system since 2019, has noticed continual upgrades, and scientists delineated the latest developments today (Feb. 18) in the journal Nature.
Within the novel analysis, the team indicated they had the ability to encode data onto routine borosilicate glass — a resilient, heat-impervious kind of glass that’s regularly engaged in glassware observed in many kitchens. In the past, the scientists were solely capable of storing data on pure fused silica glass, which is costly to generate and accessible from merely a handful of sources. They similarly showcased various fresh data-encoding and data-interpretation methods.
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“The advancement tackles fundamental challenges to commercialization: expenditure and accessibility of storage media,” study co-author Richard Black, partner research manager at Microsoft, expressed in a statement. “We have unlocked the science for parallel high-speed recording and established a technique to authorize enhanced aging analyses on the recorded glass, indicating that the data is anticipated to persist undamaged for a minimum of 10,000 years.”
The team accommodated- 4.8TB of data — equivalent to approximately 200 4K films — onto 301 tiers in a fragment of glass measuring 0.08 by 4.72 inches (2 by 120 millimeters) at a composition velocity of 3.13 megabytes per second (MB/s). Although that’s significantly more sluggish than the composition velocity of hard drives (roughly 160 MB/s) or solid-state drives (roughly 7,000 MB/s), the scientists determined that the data had the capacity to endure more than 10,000 years. Most hard drives and solid-state drives, by contrast, endure up to about 10 years.
That durability and constancy are the primary operators of advancements similar to glass- and ceramics-centered storage apparatuses for principally archival motives — rather than usage in the majority of day-to-day gadgets. In theory, these alternative storage configurations are significantly more trustworthy than prevailing configurations and have the capacity to function as a long-standing repository for the data we produce.
To exemplify this notion, Microsoft scientists beforehand outlined schemes to uphold melodies in the Global Music Vault in Norway. The announcement similarly attends another independent breakthrough in DNA storage, with 360TB of data competent of being secured in half a mile (0.8 kilometers) of DNA.
Laser-concentrated on archival storage
Within the analysis, the scientists unveiled numerous findings that jointly produced more streamlined and cost-effective composition and interpretation on glass.
First, they detailed advancements in a technique termed birefringent voxel recording with laser pulsations. Birefringence is the phenomenon of double refraction, and voxels are the 3D equivalent of 2D pixels. The scientists cultivated a pseudo-single pulse — an enhancement on the preceding two pulsations — in which one pulse has the capacity to partition following polarization to constitute the primary pulse for one voxel and the subsequent pulse for another.
This arrived adjacent to parallel recording potentials, in which numerous data voxels have the capacity to be recorded at the same instance in close adjacency, considerably heightening the composition pace.
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The scientists similarly contrived a novel storage type in the guise of “phase voxels,” in which data has the capacity to be encoded into the phase alteration — the shifting of the phase of a material via alterations in energy and pressure — of the glass as opposed to its polarization, which transpires in the birefringent voxels. This is feasible with just a single pulsation, and the scientists similarly conceived a novel technique to interpret data secured in this manner.
Ultimately, the team discovered a means to recognize aging data storage in voxels within the glass. They utilized this method alongside standard accelerated aging techniques to ascertain that the data had the capacity to endure more than 10,000 years.
Moving forward, the team will ponder how to ameliorate composition and interpretation technologies, encompassing means to augment the lasers that record the data into the glass storage apparatuses. They will similarly seek distinct glass compositions to locate the ideal material on which to archive data in this format.
Article Sources
Chen, F., & Wu, B. (2026). Laser-written glass tablets can preserve data for millennia. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00286-5
Keumars Afifi-SabetChannel Editor, Technology
Keumars is the technology editor at Live Science. He has authored for a multitude of publications including ITPro, The Week Digital, ComputerActive, The Independent, The Observer, Metro and TechRadar Pro. He has functioned as a technology journalist for over five years, having formerly maintained the role of features editor with ITPro. He is an NCTJ-qualified journalist and possesses a degree in biomedical sciences from Queen Mary, University of London. He’s similarly registered as a foundational chartered manager with the Chartered Management Institute (CMI), having qualified as a Level 3 Team leader with distinction in 2023.
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