Microsoft’s Glass Chip Solves The 'Digital Dark Age'

A new laser-etched glass storage system preserves information for 10,000 years.

Credit: Microsoft Project Silica

Everything is going digital, making information easy to copy and easy to move, but over time it can degrade or disappear - despite the noble efforts of the Internet Archive. But now researchers working with Microsoft’s Project Silica have developed a laser-etched glass storage system capable of holding truly mind-boggling amounts of data that could survive for many thousands of years. The technique encodes information in microscopic “voxels” using special lasers, creating a durable archival medium designed for museums, governments, and long-term data preservation. So, thousands of years from now, our descendants may learn of our lives from a thin slice of glass carrying an impressive load of data - all thanks to the magic of physics.

Microsoft’s Project Silica revealed the latest technological advances in what is essentially laser-modified glass storage for sensitive data. The system, called Silica, works somewhat like a multidimensional CD. But the revolutionary - even magical - aspect of the technique is that it harnesses the properties of light to encode gigabytes of data within a tiny square of quartz glass roughly 0.08 inches (2 millimeters) thick.

Project Silica says it is the world’s first storage system that's designed to address humanity’s need for a long-term, sustainable storage technology. They say it's low cost and electromagnetic field-proof, offering lifetimes of tens to hundreds of thousands of years, and has huge consequences for sustainability - because we can leave data in situ, and eliminate the costly cycle of periodically copying data to a new media generation.

“We are solving the ‘Digital Dark Age,’” Peter Kazansky, an optical physicist at the UK's University of Southampton, who was uninvolved in the new work, told Gizmodo. “Our current records are kept on fragile magnetic platters that are constantly decaying; this research ensures our digital heritage becomes permanent.”