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Some cultures used stone, others used parchment. Some even, for a time, used floppy disks. Now scientists have come up with a new way to keep archived data safe that, they say, could endure for millennia: laser-writing in glass.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n The Guardian\u2019s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.\u00a0Learn more.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n From personal photos that are kept for a lifetime to business documents, medical information, data for scientific research, national records and heritage data, there is no shortage of information that needs to be preserved for very long periods of time.<\/p>\n But there is a problem: current long-term storage of digital media \u2013 including in datacentres that underpin the cloud \u2013 relies on magnetic tape and hard disks, both of which have limited lifespans. That means repeated cycles of copying on to new tapes and disks are required.<\/p>\n Now experts at Microsoft in Cambridge say they have refined a method for long-term data storage based on glass.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has incredible durability and incredible longevity. So once the data is safely inside the glass, it\u2019s good for a really long time,\u201d said Richard Black, the research director of Project Silica.<\/p>\n Writing in the journal Nature, Black and colleagues report how the system works by turning data \u2013 in the form of bits \u2013 into groups of symbols, which are then encoded as tiny deformations, or voxels, within a piece of glass using a femtosecond laser. Several hundred layers of these voxels, Black notes, can be made within 2mm of glass.<\/p>\n The system uses a single laser pulse to make each voxel, making it highly efficient. By splitting the laser into four independent beams writing at the same time, the team say the technology can record 65.9m bits per second.<\/p>\n The researchers found they could store 4.84TB of data in a 12 sq cm piece of fused silica glass, 2mm deep \u2013 about the same amount of information that is held in 2m printed books, an accompanying article by researchers in China notes.<\/p>\n The team have also developed a way to create voxels in borosilicate glass, the material used by the Pyrex brand.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s much more commonly available, it\u2019s much cheaper, it\u2019s easier to make manufactured,\u201d said Black.<\/p>\n Once written, the voxels can be read by sweeping the glass under an automated microscope with a camera to capture images of each layer. These images are then processed and decoded using a machine learning system.<\/p>\n \u201cAll steps, including writing, reading and decoding, are fully automated, supporting robust, low-effort operation,\u201d the team write.<\/p>\n They add that the data storage system is very stable, with experiments suggesting the deformations created by the laser would last more than 10,000 years at room temperature.<\/p>\n However, Black said the technology was unlikely to end up in a home office, instead noting that the system was intended to be used by big cloud companies.<\/p>\n Melissa Terras, professor of digital cultural heritage at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the work, welcomed the study.<\/p>\n \u201cAny type of storage that allows for long-term digital information management is exciting, particularly if the media is inert and has the potential to last without special maintenance,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n But, she added, potential difficulties remain \u2013 including whether the instructions and technology for reading the glass would remain available for future generations.<\/p>\n And there is another issue: significant investment would be needed to deploy Silica at scale. \u201cWe are not in an economic moment where industry or politics is choosing to build infrastructure that will support the information needs of future generations,\u201d said Terras.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d recommend that if that was a concern, we should pour our scant resources into fixing the aftermath of the cyber-attacks on the British Library, to ensure the information we already have in known formats is stewarded and available to users now and in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some cultures used stone, others used parchment. Some even, for a time, used floppy disks. Now scientists have come up with a new way to keep archived data safe that, they say, could endure for millennia: laser-writing in glass. The Guardian\u2019s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[1111,659,8243,23200,23199,4305,384,9302,722],"class_list":{"0":"post-44829","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-data","9":"tag-find","10":"tag-glass","11":"tag-laserwritten","12":"tag-parchment","13":"tag-preserve","14":"tag-scientists","15":"tag-stone","16":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}