• Science Microsoft Researchers Figure Out How to Store Data Inside Glass Using Lasers The researchers say the data could be retrieved from the glass in 10,000 years. • A piece of Project Silica media written with data. • Most of the world’s information is stored digitally right now. • Every year, we generate more data than we did the year before. • Now, with AI in the picture, a technology that relies on a whole lot of data, the amount of digital information we save is increasing exponentially. • The research arm of Microsoft has been working on a method for data storage that uses a laser to write inside glass.
Article Summaries:
- Microsoft’s Project Silica has demonstrated a laser‑based method for writing data inside borosilicate glass, a cheap kitchen‑ware material, with the aim of achieving 10,000‑year durability. The team uses femtosecond laser pulses to create “phase voxels,” tiny three‑dimensional changes that can be read by a neural‑network‑assisted system. The research, published in Nature on February 18, shows that the glass does not degrade over time, potentially eliminating the need for routine data migration that current media require. If scalable, the technology could transform long‑term digital storage by providing a virtually permanent, low‑cost medium.
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