Microsoft’s Silica project uses lasers to encode data in glass, promising preservation for over 10,000 years, a potential milestone for archiving human knowledge.
PARIS: Microsoft has announced a breakthrough in data preservation, revealing that information written into glass by lasers could survive for more than 10,000 years.
The tech giant’s Silica project, active since 2019, encodes data onto silica glass plates, a material resistant to temperature, moisture and electromagnetic interference.
This addresses key problems for traditional data centres, which rely on fast-degrading hard drives and magnetic tapes requiring frequent backups.
In the journal Nature, Microsoft’s research arm stated Silica is the first glass storage technology reliably demonstrated for writing, reading and decoding data.
The process first converts data bits into symbols, which correspond to three-dimensional pixels called voxels.
A high-powered laser pulse then writes these minuscule voxels into square glass plates roughly the size of a CD.
“The symbols are written layer by layer, from the bottom up, to fill the full thickness of the glass,” the study explained.
Reading the data requires a special microscope to see each layer, with an AI-powered algorithm then decoding the information.
Microsoft researchers estimated the glass could survive over 10,000 years at 290 degrees Celsius, suggesting even longer preservation at room temperature.
The glass does not require a climate-controlled environment, offering significant energy savings compared to conventional data centres.
Another key advantage is that the glass plates cannot be hacked or otherwise altered after writing.
Researchers Feng Chen and Bo Wu from Shandong University noted one plate can hold the equivalent of about two million printed books or 5,000 ultra-high-definition 4K films.
In a separate Nature article, they warned of challenges ahead, including writing data faster, mass-producing plates and ensuring easy future access.
However, they praised Silica for creating a “viable solution for preserving the records of human civilisation”.
“If implemented at scale, it could represent a milestone in the history of knowledge storage, akin to oracle bones, medieval parchment or the modern hard drive,” they said.
“One day, a single piece of glass might carry the torch of human culture and knowledge across millennia.”
Experts not involved in the project cautioned that this new technology still faces numerous hurdles before widespread adoption.
