Femtosecond lasers etch data into a very stable medium. Right now, Silica hardware isn't quite ready for commercialization. Credit: Microsoft Research Archival storage poses lots of challenges. We want media that is extremely dense and stable for centuries or more, and, ideally, doesn’t consume any energy when not being accessed. Lots of ideas have floated around—even DNA has been considered—but one of the simplest is to cut the data into glass. Many forms of glass are very physically and chemic...