The amount of digital information that humanity produces today is huge and storing all that data is expensive for companies that store all the data that people upload to the internet on their physical servers.

Technology experts from Azure, a division of Microsoft, began investigating new methods of storing digital information and were inspired by the 1978 “SUPERMAN” movie, in which all the information and wisdom of Krypton were stored in a piece of glass

But was this possible? Could a piece of glass be used to store data?; Microsoft began experimenting with the latest discoveries in ultrafast laser optics and artificial intelligence.

That is why the project called SILICA was born, which resulted in a glass that can be encoded with a laser to create layers of grids and three-dimensional nano structures at different depths and at different angles.

Subsequently, an artificial intelligence algorithm can read and process this data by decoding the images and patterns created by the light passing through the glass.

Although we currently don’t have flying cars as proposed by the Back to the Future II film, the proposal by SUPERMAN of '78 is already a dream come true, the first file stored in this glass plate of only 75mm wide 75mm long and 2mm thick, it was precisely the 1978 SUPERMAN film, in tribute to the tape that inspired Microsoft geniuses.

According to Mark Russinovich, chief technology officer of Azure:

Storing the entire Superman film in glass and being able to read it successfully is an important milestone. I don’t say that all questions have been fully answered, but it seems that we are now in a phase where we are working on refinement and experimentation, instead of asking the question "can we do it?"

Using glass to store data has the advantage that this material is resistant to moisture, high temperatures, can be demagnetized, boiled and nothing happens.

There is a lot of valuable information, such as medical records and cultural creations, that must be constantly transformed into new archives to keep them in good condition. With this crystal storage technology, they can be stored for much longer and will not need the expensive maintenance needed by current servers that are saturated with digital information.

The Silica project was made in collaboration with the Warner Bros. which intends to store in glass all its films that are currently in vaults and other supports that could be destroyed in a catastrophe.

Vicky Colf, director of technology at Warner Bros comments:

That was always our beacon of hope for what we thought would be possible someday, so when we learned that Microsoft had developed this glass-based technology, we wanted to prove it.

The advancement of digital technology is creating new challenges to store all the information that is generated day by day. Now a new futuristic option is developing and what seemed pure fantasy became an amazing reality.