[디지털투데이 AI리포터] On the 9th (local time), the online media Gigajin reported that the USB drive becomes lighter as data is stored in the USB memory, published in BBC Science Focus Magazine.
This magical phenomenon is because the flash memory used by USB drives stores data in a combination of 0 and 1.
In a USB state where no data is stored, the transistors are set to 0. When data is stored, a 1 is added to the transistor and electrons are emitted from the transistor, so the weight of the USB memory becomes lighter by the number of electrons emitted.
According to John D. Kubiatowicz, a professor of computer science at the University of California, when data is stored in a USB, the total number of electrons does not change, but captured electrons have a higher energy than uncaptured electrons. The mass of electrons per electron is 9.1093837015 × 10-31 kilograms (kg).
This energy is very small, about 10^-15 joules (J) per 1 bit. According to Einstein’s law of mass-energy equivalence (E=mc^2), energy equals mass, so a USB drive full of data can be slightly lighter than an empty one.
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