Data can be stored in glass for 10,000 years

In a new study, scientists at Microsoft Research have shown that they can write information into a lump of borosilicate glass. Their calculations suggest the data trapped inside would be stable for at least 10,000 years. The storage media we rely on today has a limited lifetime. Hard drives and reels of tape lose information over time. Every few years, vast archives of digital information must be copied onto new devices before the old ones decay. “That’s not great from a cost or sustainability point of view,” says Richard Black, a manager at Microsoft Research Cambridge who led the project.Many teams worldwide are working on alternative data storage solutions, such as DNA, peptides, and other polymers. Microsoft’s Project Silica is one of several groups that has been working on a glass solution. The group says it has now brought the technology closer to a practical archival system with high-speed writing and reading in common borosilicate glass (Nature 2026, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-10042-w).“This technology would change the way organizations store data,” Black says. “The beauty is that data in glass is incredibly protected from temperature, moisture, and dust.” And because the storage environment no longer needs to be carefully controlled, “keeping a piece of glass on a shelf doesn’t cost very much.”The system works by creating tiny structures inside glass called voxels—3D pixels buried beneath the surface—put there with a femtosecond laser pulse focused into the glass. When it focuses on the glass, the laser causes a “plasma-induced nano explosion,” Black says. “The