Microsoft reports excellent progress on attempts to encode data in glass using femtosecond lasers.

Project Silica is developing technology that could preserve information for 10,000 years. The system creates groups of symbols, which are then encoded as tiny deformations, or voxels into glass with a laser.

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. Microsoft claims they could store 4.84TB of data in a 12 sq cm piece of fused silica glass, 2mm deep – about the same amount of information that is held in 2m printed books.

“All steps, including writing, reading and decoding, are fully automated, supporting robust, low-effort operation”. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/18/scientists-new-way-preserve-data-microsoft #Microsoft #DataStorage #ProjectSilica #Storage #Data #ITData #InformatinTechnology #Lasers