If you wear a diamond on your finger, it likely has flaws, even if you can’t see them. Don’t blame your partners for your flawed engagement rings, thank them. You could be flaunting the future of data storage on your digits.

如果你手上戴了一顆鑽石，那它很可能存在瑕疵，即便你用肉眼看不到。別因為訂婚戒指有瑕疵而指責你的伴侶，而是要表示感謝。因為你或許可以向人炫耀，數據存儲的未來就在你的手指上。

A paper published Wednesday in Science Advances shows how diamonds can be harnessed to store data for the long term. Right now, a tiny diamond — about half as long as a grain of rice and thinner than a sheet of paper — can hold a hundred times more information than a DVD. That’s not much within the context of the world’s growing data hoard. But in the future physicists could access a diamond with storage capacity a million times greater than that of a DVD, maybe more.

週三發表在《科學前沿》(Science Advances)上的一篇論文，展示了利用鑽石長期存儲數據的方法。現在，一丁點兒鑽石——長度與半粒米相仿，厚度還趕不上一張紙——可以存儲的信息量要比一張DVD多出百倍。相較於世界上日益增大的數據存儲量，這不算什麼。但在未來，物理學家可能會讓一顆鑽石具有比一張DVD大100萬倍的信息存儲容量，也許還會更多。

Groups all over the world are scrambling to find a place to cram all the data we’re generating taking selfies, swiping credit cards and doing just about everything we do today. They’ve proposed DNA, holograms, old-fashioned magnetic tape and other ideas. Diamonds aren’t new to the memory game, either. They’ve been proposed for quantum data storage, which is kind of like teleportation. But this isn’t that. It’s basic storage 101 — 010101 (and so on).

當我們自拍、刷信用卡，乃至在今時今日處理一切事情的時候，都會生成數據。全世界的許多組織都在爭先恐後尋找一個可以把所有這些數據塞進去的地方。它們曾提議使用DNA、全息圖、老式磁帶以及其他一些載體。在數據存儲領域，鑽石也不是新鮮事物。一直有人提議用它們進行量子數據存儲——有點像隱形傳輸。但這裡說的跟那種不是一回事。它是基本存儲101—010101（以此類推）。

It starts with a tiny, atomic-sized imperfection known as a nitrogen vacancy center in your otherwise perfect diamond. These flaws occur when a stray nitrogen atom — or a few of them — sneak in among its carbon structure. Deleting a carbon atom near the nitrogen leaves an empty space perfect for stashing data.

它首先需要你那看似完美無缺的鑽石內存在原子大小的瑕疵，名為氮原子空缺中心。當一個或者幾個游離的氮原子在鑽石的碳結構中潛行的時候，這些瑕疵就會產生。剔除氮原子附近的一個碳原子，便會留下一個適合存儲數據的完美空間。

The researchers, a team of physicists from City University of New York, used lasers to encode and read data on these tiny spaces, which they treated like magnets that could repel or absorb an electron. To encode simple grayscale images like a smiley face, Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger they added an electron by shining a green laser and took one away with a red laser. They read their data like a computer reads 0s and 1s, but instead of digits there was light, which indicated the presence or absence of electrons.

研究人員是來自紐約市立大學(City University of New York)的一組物理學家。他們用雷射在這些微小的空間中對數據進行編碼和讀取，並把這些空間當成是可以排斥或者吸收電子的磁鐵。為了對簡單的灰度圖像——比如笑臉，以及阿爾伯特·愛因斯坦(Albert Einstein)和埃爾溫·薛定諤(Erwin Schrödinger)的形象——進行編碼，他們通過發射綠色雷射增加一個電子，並通過發射紅色雷射減少一個。讀取數據時就像電腦讀取0和1時一樣，不過這裡涉及的不是數字，而是光，它會顯示電子存在或者不存在。

While both use light to read data, the concept is a little different from DVD storage, said Jacob Henshaw, a graduate student who worked on the study.

一名參與了這項研究的研究生雅各布·亨肖(Jacob Henshaw)說，雖然都是用光來讀取數據，但這一概念與DVD存儲有所不同。

“A DVD is like a 2-D puzzle, and this diamond technique is like a 3-D model,” he said. Unlike the DVD, which has only one surface, a diamond can store data in multiple layers, like a whole stack of DVDs.

「DVD就像2D拼圖，這種鑽石技術則像3D模型，」他說。與只有一個表面的DVD不同，鑽石可以對數據進行多層存儲，相當於一大摞DVD。

This storage would also work differently than a magnetic hard drive, because diamonds, as they say, are forever. Every time you access or rewrite your hard drive, the material it’s made of degrades, and after five or 10 years, it’s dead. But the defects in the diamonds don’t change, and if you do nothing, your data could last as long as your diamond.

這種存儲方式與磁性硬盤驅動器的運行也不一樣，因為正如人們所說，鑽石恆久遠。每當你訪問或者重寫硬盤的時候，構成硬盤的材料都會發生降解，五年或者十年之後它就報廢了。但鑽石內的瑕疵不會發生改變，如果你什麼都不做，你的數據會像鑽石一樣恆久遠。

“There is a no way you can change it. It will sit there forever,” said Siddharth Dhomkar, the lead author on the study.

「沒有任何辦法能改變它。它會永遠待在那裡，」論文的第一作者悉達多·多姆卡(Siddharth Dhomkar)說。

Veterans in the data storage industry, like Jon Toigo, are skeptical. He worries that the only people fluent in this data exchange might be men in lab coats, that there will be flaws in the data, and that cost will be high, even with imperfect diamonds. “It’s usually a 10-year interval before the tech is released for commercial use,” he said.

數據存儲行業的一些資深人士，比如喬恩·托伊戈(Jon Toigo)，對此抱有疑慮。他擔心能熟練進行這種數據交換的或許只有實驗室裡的研究人員，以及數據會出現瑕疵，還擔心成本過於高昂，儘管所用的鑽石是有瑕疵的那種。「通常而言，這項技術再過十年才能實現商用，」他說。

The researchers say their industrial fabricated diamond, which cost about $150, was the cheapest thing in their experiment. Their concept works on any material with the same flaw and any flawed diamond — not just lab ones. “The bigger the diamond, the more defects, the more places to put information,” said Mr. Henshaw.

研究人員稱，他們在實驗中用到的最便宜的東西是以大約150美元（約合人民幣1000元）購買的工業用合成鑽石。他們的概念適用於任何具有同樣瑕疵的材料以及任何一顆有瑕疵的鑽石——不只是實驗室裡的那些。「鑽石越大，瑕疵越多，存放信息的空間就越多，」亨肖說。

Whether or not your diamond engagement ring could one day also hold your wedding photos is something lab members have joked about. A ring on your finger has the same defects as a ring in the lab. But light exposure will scramble the diamond’s data: “You can put something on top of the diamond, but if you were to walk around in sunlight, you would erase your wedding photos, most likely,” he said.

實驗室成員會拿有朝一日是否也能用你的鑽石訂婚戒指儲存婚禮的照片來開玩笑。你手上的鑽石和實驗室的鑽石有著同樣的瑕疵。不過，光暴露會讓鑽石內的數據遭到破壞：「你可以在鑽石上放點兒什麼，但你如果走在陽光下，婚禮的照片極有可能被抹掉，」他說。