夜光的本质与夜明珠千古之谜的揭开

夜明珠之谜在中华文明、印度文明、希腊文明、罗马文明、犹太文明和日本文明中都存在，但迄今为止仍是一个世界性的难题和一个人类文明史上的未解之谜。通过回顾夜明珠的理论研究现状，指出夜明珠夜光的本质不是传统所谓磷光，而是指巨粒金刚石熠熠闪光和自然出火的光学性质，是金刚石对于白光折射、反射、全反射和色散等综合作用的结果；同时通过比较矿物的光学性质，得出夜明珠的本质就是自然出火的、具有曲面形或似球形的巨粒金刚石，而不是光学性质与金刚石类似的锆石、金红石、石榴石，也不是折光率和色散系数明显低于金刚石的其它宝石、工艺石材、料珠或者珍珠。夜明珠千古之谜的揭开表明夜明珠可以成为中国古代历史文献记载中指称巨粒金刚石的标志矿物或者指纹矿物。

ESSENCE OF NOCTILUCENCE AND UNCOVERING OF THE LONG-STANDING SECRET ABOUT NIGHT-SHINING JEWEL

The mystery of night-shining jewel exists in a variety of civilizations including Chinese, Indian, Greece, Roman, Rabbinical and Japanese, but is up to now still a conundrum in the history of human civilization on a worldwide basis. Through reviewing the status quo of research about this jewel, it is pointed out in this paper that the essence of noctilucence doesn't refer to the so-called phosphorescence that requires external energy for stimulation, but rather refers to giantgrained diamond's natural scintillation and dispersion or fire qualities, which are resulted from the integration of refraction, reflection, total reflection and dispersion of white light by diamond. Based on a comparison about optical qualities of gems and jades, it is concluded that night-shining jewel is simply the naturally-occurring giant-grained diamond with round or curved crystal faces and scintillation properties,rather than zircon or rutile or garnet with optical signatures similar to those of diamond, or other gems, stones, glass or pearl with virtually lower refractive indices and dispersion coefficients than those of diamond. The virtual decoding of the mystery of night shining jewel demonstrates that night shining jewel can be the index mineral or fingerprint mineral referring to diamond in at least Chinese historical literature.