Stone, parchment or laser-written glass? Scientists find new way to preserve data

Datacentres that support the cloud rely on disks and tape for long-term storage. Photograph: Tetra Images/Erik Isakson/Getty Images

Some cultures used stone, others used parchment. Some even, for a time, used floppy disks. Now scientists have come up with a new way to keep archived data safe that, they say, could endure for millennia: laser-writing in glass.

From personal photos that are kept for a lifetime to business documents, medical information, data for scientific research, national records and heritage data, there is no shortage of information that needs to be preserved for very long periods of time.