Humans are generating more data than ever before. While much of these data do not need to be stored long-term, some – such as scientific and historical records – would ideally still be retrievable in decades, or even centuries. The problem is that modern digital archive systems such as hard disk drives do not last that long. This means that data must regularly be transferred to new media, which is costly and time-consuming.
A team at Microsoft Research now claims to have found a solution. By using ultrashort, intense laser pulses to “write” data units called phase voxels into glass chips, the team says it has created a medium that could store 4.8 terabytes (TB) of data error-free for more than 10::000 years – a span that exceeds the age of history’s oldest surviving written records.
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