Microsoft's Silica stores data in glass with 10,000 year lifespan
Feb 22nd 2026
Researchers demonstrated a complete read and write system that uses ultrashort laser pulses to inscribe data in ordinary glass, fitting two million books into a palm-sized square and projecting a readable lifetime beyond 10,000 years.
- Silica writes data by focusing femtosecond laser pulses to create tiny three-dimensional voxels inside ordinary glass.
- A palm-sized glass square can store about two million books worth of data.
- Accelerated aging tests suggest the recorded data could remain readable for more than 10,000 years.
- The team used two voxel types: void-like micro-explosions for very high density and refractive index changes for faster, lower-energy writing.
- Silica includes encoding, decoding and error correction and uses commercially available ultrafast lasers, making practical deployment more feasible.