Our knowledge of the past comes from stone tablets and old parchment. But thousands of years from now, our descendants may learn of our lives from a thin slice of glass carrying an impressive load of data—all thanks to physics that sounds borderline magical. Today, Microsoft’s Project Silica unveiled the latest technological advances in what is essentially laser-modified glass storage for sensitive data. Described in a Nature paper, the system, called Silica, works somewhat like a multidimension...