Diamonds: for years, they existed to cut stuff and bribe shallow women into believing they loved your wallet and by extension, you. This allotrope of carbon hasn’t really been pulling its weight otherwise, though, until the University of California at Santa Barbara came along and figured out a way to make that happen.
The team figured out that the spins of nitrogen atoms in the diamonds, which make them impure, are linked to the spins of nearby electrons. So, by storing data within the spin, it’s more stable than other methods of quantum storage.
They did it with “intense microwave fields”, which we are forced to assume were also used to pop a gigantic Jiffy Pop in someone’s house, because that’s how science works, right?
[ via the DeBeers front at 80Beats ]