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University of Southampton researchers reported a quartz-glass storage disc with a capacity of up to 360 TB and estimated data stability for 13.8 billion years at 190°C. That is an estimate—not a billion-year test—and the 2016 announcement described research technology, not a product readers could buy. “14 billion years” rounds the university’s figure; “quartz coin” is an informal headline phrase.
What Southampton’s 360TB claim means
On 18 February 2016, the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) announced a method for storing digital information in nanostructured fused quartz, a type of glass. The university reported a capacity of up to 360 TB per disc and a lifetime estimate of 13.8 billion years at 190°C. The announcement also described the medium as practically unlimited in lifetime at room temperature.
The 13.8-billion-year figure is a projected lifetime, not a duration researchers observed in an experiment. It should not be read as a guarantee that any disc will preserve readable data for that long under all conditions. The popular “14 billion years” wording rounds the university’s estimate, while “quartz coin” is not the cited name of a commercial product. The University of Southampton’s announcement is the primary source for these figures.
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The data are written as nanostructured dots in three layers inside fused quartz. The layers are separated by five micrometres. “5D” refers to five properties used to encode information: the dots’ three-dimensional positions, plus their size and orientation. It does not mean five ordinary spatial dimensions.
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The structures affect the path and polarization of light. Southampton said the recorded signal can be read with an optical microscope and a polarizer. That describes a specialized optical process, not a standard drive or a disc that can be read by an ordinary computer.
What researchers had actually recorded
The university said the method was first experimentally demonstrated in 2013 by recording a 300 kb digital text file. By the 2016 announcement, the team had recorded digital copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Newton’s Opticks, the Magna Carta, and the King James Bible. Southampton also reported that the ORC presented a 5D-encoded copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to UNESCO at the International Year of Light closing ceremony in Mexico.
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These demonstrations establish that data and named documents were encoded. They do not establish survival over geological or cosmic timescales; the long lifetime remains an estimate.
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Southampton’s 2016 announcement reported thermal stability up to 1,000°C. A contemporary Futurism article instead gave a figure of up to 157°C, so the two published accounts differ. For the university’s reported result, the primary announcement is the stronger source; neither number should be mistaken for evidence that the lifetime estimate was validated by an exceptionally long test. See Futurism’s 2016 headline article for its different figure.
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Is the quartz storage disc available to buy?
The 2016 university announcement presented the work as research and said the team was looking for industry partners. It identified archives, museums, and libraries as possible users. That is a historical description of potential applications—not confirmation of a current partner program, commercial product, consumer reader, or writer. The cited sources do not establish present-day availability.
Accordingly, the 360 TB figure is a reported research capacity, not a specification for a retail disc. Without a documented compatible reader and writer, a generic hard drive, cloud service, or quartz object cannot be treated as an alternative or as compatible with this method.
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- Stored data is engraved - ultimate archival solution. Impervious to environmental exposure, including light, temperature and humidity
- Media discs with up to 100GB of storage space to back-up your HD video, music and photos with superb resolution and amazing sound quality.
- Withstood rigorous testing for durability by US Department of Defense. Compatible with BDXL optical drives
- Verbatim has been a leader in data storage technology since 1969, and guarantees this product with a 10-year limited warranty and technical support
Why the result matters—and what it does not prove
The concept is aimed at durable, high-capacity preservation: information encoded in stable glass could be useful for institutions that need to retain records over long periods. Professor Peter Kazansky of Southampton’s ORC described the ambition as preserving documents and information for future generations. But capacity and material durability alone do not settle the practical questions an archive would face, such as the availability of writing and reading equipment and ongoing access to the data.
The defensible takeaway is specific: Southampton reported 360 TB per disc, described a femtosecond-laser-based 5D optical storage method, and estimated a 13.8-billion-year lifetime at 190°C. The experiment had demonstrated recording files and documents; it had not demonstrated that they would remain readable for billions of years.
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