Scientists at Microsoft Research in the United States have demonstrated a system called Silica for writing and reading information in ordinary pieces of glass that can store 2 million books’ worth of data in a thin, palm-sized square.
In a paper published in Nature, the researchers say their tests suggest the data will be readable for more than 10,000 years.
What tiny pulses of light can do
The new system, called Silica, uses extremely short flashes of laser light to inscribe bits of information into a block of ordinary glass.
These pulses are called “ultrashort” for a reason. Each one lasts mere quadrillionths of a second (aka femtoseconds or 10–15 s).
To get your head around that: comparing 10 femtoseconds to a single minute is like comparing one minute to the entire age of the universe.
These incredibly short flashes can be used to generate even shorter bursts of light lasting attoseconds (a thousandth of a femtosecond or 10-18 s).
These attosecond bursts can be used to observe the motion of electrons inside atoms and molecules — and in 2023, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for pioneering work in this area, to Ferenc Krausz (coincidentally, my former Ph.D. supervisor), Anne L’Huillier, and Pierre Agostini.
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