Demonic device converts information to energy
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By Zeeya Merali
The laws of physics say that you can't get energy for nothing -- worse still, you will always get out of a system less energy than you put in. But a nanoscale experiment inspired by a nineteenth-century paradox that seemed to break those laws now shows that you can generate energy from information.
Masaki Sano, a physicist at the University of Tokyo, and his colleagues have demonstrated that a bead can be coaxed up a 'spiral staircase' without any energy being directly transferred to the bead to push it upwards. Instead, it is persuaded along its route by a series of judiciously timed decisions to change the height of the 'steps' around it, based on information about the bead's position. In this sense, "information is being converted to energy", says Sano. The work is published by Nature Physics today1.
The team's set-up was inspired by a nineteenth-century thought experiment proposed by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, which -- controversially, at the time -- suggested that information could be converted into energy. In the thought experiment, a demon guards a door between two rooms, each filled with gas molecules. The demon allows only fast-moving gas particles to pass out of the room on the left and into the room on the right, and only slow-moving particles to pass in the opposite direction.
As a result, the room on the right gradually gets warmer as the average speed of particles in that room increases, and the room on the left gets colder. The demon thus creates a difference in temperature without ever imparting any energy directly to the gas molecules -- simply by knowing information about their speeds. This seems to violate the second law of thermodynamics, which states that you cannot make a system more ordered without any energy input.
A paradox put into practice
To create a real-life version of the demon experiment, Sano and his colleagues placed an elongated nanoscale polystyrene bead, which could rotate either clockwise or anticlockwise, into a bath of buffer solution. The team applied a varying voltage around the bead, making it progressively harder for the bead to rotate a full 360 degrees in the anticlockwise direction. This effectively created a "spiral staircase" that was harder to "climb up" in the anticlockwise direction than to "fall down" in the clockwise direction, says Sano.
When left alone, the bead was randomly jostled by the surrounding molecules, sometimes being given enough of a push to turn anticlockwise against the voltage -- or jump up the stairs -- but more often turning clockwise -- or going "downstairs". But then the team introduced their version of Maxwell's demon.
They watched the motion of the bead, and when it randomly turned anticlockwise they quickly adjusted the voltage -- the equivalent of Maxwell's demon slamming the door shut on a gas molecule -- making it tougher for the bead to turn back clockwise. The bead is thus encouraged to keep climbing "upstairs", without any energy being directly imparted to the bead, says Sano.
The experiment does not actually violate the second law of thermodynamics, because in the system as a whole, energy must be consumed by the equipment -- and the experimenters -- to monitor the bead and switch the voltage as needed. But it does show that information can be used as a medium to transfer energy, says Sano. The bead is driven as a mini-rotor, with a information-to-energy conversion efficiency of 28%.
"This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content," says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. "This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale," says Jarzynski.
Vlatko Vedral, a quantum physicist at the University of Oxford, UK, says that it will be interesting to see whether the technique can be used to drive nanomotors and artificial molecular machines. "I would also be excited to see whether something like this is already at work in nature," he says. "After all, you could say that all living systems are 'Maxwell's demons', trying to defy the tendency for order to turn back into randomness."
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39 Comments
Add CommentObviously opening and closing doors does not consume energy nor does quickly adjusting voltage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInformation may have a thermodynamic content and perhaps enthalpy? But does this experiment prove anything? Did they actually take into account the energy consumed by the "brain" that adjusted the voltage? What about the mini motor and its losses?
Of course information has energy content. Look at your laptop. It's a device that process and store information. Does it consume electrical energy? We create information by manipulating electrons in a semiconductor, or by moving electrons in the neurons of our brain. Does your brain consume calories? Electrons as well as other subatomic particles have energy so information requires energy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course microscopic particles also obey the laws of thermodynamics. Their motions are random so we expect their degree of disorder will increase over time. That's entropy, 2nd law of thermodynamics.
So this experiment does not really say anything fundamentally different from what we already know.
This is what I call a "Hail Mary" play for a physicist whose grant money is running out. Please.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisScience!: Priceless
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis may be the most contrived bit of nonsense I've ever seen called science. Something is missing here, either in the explanation or the science. It's like a bad middle school math teacher trying to explain concepts they only barely understand. Why not just use a cylinder with one end connected to a central column and the other extending out across an inclined plane spiraling up the side. Add notches to the cylinder so that it can roll one way but not the other and randomly shake the thing back and forth. You'd get the same effect and no information was required, and no energy was "directly" applied in a specific direction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can do this on a larger scale. I can dig a trench and make water flow where it would have remained in place without imparting any energy to the water itself.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe need a 'claptrap' button.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExperimental proof for conversion of information to energy means information is not just an abstract human concept.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think it also implies conversion of energy to information is possible too.
Then maybe the whole Universe/reality is just information!
What is information unless there is an observer. If there is an observer does he undergo a negative flow of information corresponding to the positive flow described external to him?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs there an energetic efficieny of which an observer extracts information from the environment?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes this efficiency vary for specific tasks.
Is mathematics the most efficient way of humans converting energy computationally to information?
Is this how the brain works.
Is this how neurons are arranged?
reflectogenesis@hotmail.co.uk
peter reynolds
Could this be a definition of life. The most efficient way of converting energy into information at a molecular level?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre there a number of solutions to this problem giving rise to speciation?
Is language an equivalent way or alternative to mathematics as an isoenergetically efficient way of converting energy to information?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisreflectogeneis@hotmail.co.uk
peter reynolds
Does this define evolution? The most efficient way of extracting information from a particular environment - can this be tested?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan these solutions be seen evolving?
Peter Reynolds
reflectogenesis@hotmail.co.uk
Whats the minimum amount of energy required to create something which can perceive information?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhats the minimum amount of information required to perceive information?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs mass therefore equivalent to information?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan one therefore say something about the equilibrium of black holes in the universe?
Information is an ordered arrangement of electrons in semiconductors (computer), of molecules in DNA, and of neuron cells in brains.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is easy to see why information requires energy from the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Entropy, the degree of disorder, of natural systems is always increasing from order to disorder. To reverse this flow from disorder to order, you need to expend energy. Since information is an ordered arrangement of subatomic particles, atoms, molecules or cells, you need to expend energy to create information. So it is not surprising that computers, brains and cells that produce DNA all consume energy to produce information.
Recent experiments on quantum teleportation transmitted information faster than light. These experiments are based on the EPR experiment proposed by Einstein in 1935. They used arrangement of atoms as information. Read Michio Kaku "Physics of the Impossible"
I'm going to have to hitch-hike on sciencegod's comment. What a load of B.S.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAside from the varying voltage "surrounding the bead", the 'scientists' then chose to use alter the voltage "surrounding" the bead. The action of being surrounded sounds suspiciously like a direct action on the bead to this non-scientist.
There is no paradox involved in the Maxwell's demon: modern thermodynamics shows that the process of recognizing the speed of molecules, i.e. drawing information from them, builds entropy and consumes at least the amount of energy that can be transformed into work by taking advantage of the temperature difference between the two chambers. The main issue of this fact is that it's also applicable to things like a personality test or any kind of poll, as the action of gathering data and asking questions is an alien modification of the conditions of the subject. Taking the concept to the limit, it would be impossible making any inference about the real nature of the world outside, as the mere watching modifies the condition of objects, some kind of the so called butterfly effect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom a philosophical perspective - where does this leave Plato's Forms - as they reside in neither the mental nor the physical but nevertheless do contain or are information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOr are they an indication of the rate at which information and energy interchange.?
The observer is the force behind the information. Feedback is continuously created to be "observed" by the strategic mechanisms of the universe that turn information into whatever forms of energy will suit their ever present and evolving purposes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat a delightful display of semantics manipulation! By changing the meaning of words either the researchers or the author create a supposedly functioning paradox. Remember, paradox means "anything we are too ignorant to explain". I, too can exert indirect force on something to make it move. I can throw dirt into water and let the lighter things float and heavier things sink. I could use a lever, a fan or any number of things. I can't do this on a nano level without a lot of expensive equipment but that really isn't relevent.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe whole "information is energy" hoorah is silly as well. I can change information in a book into energy with a lighter. Energy is part of the physical world. Information is simply a way of arranging descriptors of the physical world in a manner that the living organism can use. Storing and retrieving information requires energy. Energy exists without the need of information. Since information is entirely subjective, it cannot exist without perception by a living organism which requires energy in some form.
As an accountant and not as a physicist I must make the observation that this is the biggest load of tripe I have seen a very long time in what purports to be a scientific magazine. All this experiment has done is show that by changing the voltage potential you influenced activity of a particle. Is this any different from electric motor? If you put this in a closed system without any external voltage application involving the import of energy, would it make any difference? I am dismayed at the depths the once great scientific American has descended in its pursuit of popularity. It is now a mixture of insightful informative articles and complete rubbish whereas once it was the pinnacle of informative information from the general scientific reader. I maintain my subscription for the good parts of the "curates egg" but the rotten parts really stink.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFurther to my earlier comment, a step motor under digital controlconverts information into motion, but does not create energy. Neither does the bead in this stupid experiment. Essentially what they experimenters have reinvented as an electric motor using electromagnetic force applied in a different format to that of the windings of a normal electric motor. I would be happy if the authors would enlighten me as to whether I am subject to a misconception.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisseems more like disinformation
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSure sounds like someone desperate for recognition and money!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would just like SOMEONE to show me even one single example of a true code that has NO Author.
Suppose life on earth started by a particular sequence of events - such as for example - asteroid impacts - which occurred at specific times.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAny other sequence and any other time and the environment would have not developed in and evolved in a manner such that it can support life.
Suppose that historically speaking this sequence of events was the only sequence of events that could cause life. Would not this sequence of events be considered as information and this information being encoded in the physical and chemical structure of all living material.
Or conversely that the earth itself evolved to the point where it could support life. Densification stratification vulcanism hotsprings etc. And there was only one sequence of events that gave rise to life.
Would this not likewise be considered information - irrespective of the fact that there was no observer.
It just appears that there is from our perspective as unless energy was turned into information we would not be here to surmise.
You have got the facts and observation right [ "We create information by manipulating electrons"... ]
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo all you naysayers proclaiming this experiment proves nothing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou don't understand the implications. It is a line of reasoning I have been following since I was 16 years old, essentially does information have mass. I was laughed at for even asking the question, as they seemed to have no connection to each other in standard physics.
Although the theory of it apparently has been fleshed out, the experiment empirically proves it.
It is huge, and I am sad I am not the one to have found it out or developed. That derisive laughter really made me embarrased to continue to explore the idea in any public way.
Information is an orderly arrangement of matter whether macroscopic, microscopic or subatomic. Physical states such as velocity and position are simply that - physical states. They become information only when they interact with an observer in an act of observation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnce you measure the velocity and position of a particle, they become information stored in your brain as an arrangement of neuron cells, or information in the form of a dial or digital reading in a speedometer or any measuring device. In quantum mechanics, the observer is an essential part of the physical system. An observer need not be a conscious mind. It can be an inanimate measuring device.
Quantum teleportation violates special relativity bec. information travels instantenously. Einstein devised the EPR experiment to disprove quantum mechanics since he knew it would violate special relativity. He thought it wouldn't work. But surprise, surprise, it did work.
It is interesting to note that in this illogically speculative discussion,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisno one even seems to recognize that it is patently impossible to TEMPT a bead or any other inanimate object to do anything at all.
It is fascinating to observe how people with no apparent understanding of or respect for the God of Creation use religious terms incorrectly and completely out of context.
Why describe this experiment as involving a DEMONIC DEVICE? Devices are by definition, NOT demonic. Only those who use devices for demonic purposes could be considered demonic.
"Yes They Do" My answer may be occult [i.e there is yet a complete scientific understanding of their behaviours but we know of their existences] because Dark Matter are phenomenons that interest us as they play a major role in gravitational balances in elements that are found in the cosmos.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course you can measure both position and velocity. I'm sitting on my chair. I can locate my position in latitude, longitude and elevation above sea level in earth coordinates. And my velocity is zero relative to earth's land surface.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat the Uncertainty principle says is the uncertainty in position times the uncertainty in momentum is greater than or equal to half of Plank constant. Of course Plank constant is smaller than an atom so it is negligible as far as the position and momentum of my body is concerned.
Relativity, chaos and fractals are not contradictory to information as orderly arrangement of matter and to thermodynamics, like you think. So there is no point in discussing all these as well as yellow flowers.
I don't want to blog long. Just read any modern physics textbook. It is more informative than my blog.
The point in discussing the origin of life here is that for there to be information - there nedds to be an observer. The origin of information must have been in the sequence of events which instantiated life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne might think of it as a sequence of asteroid hits on the earth. Information from the sequence being transmitted to the environment in an order so that life emerged from the unique environment created.
My body's position coordinates and velocity are all RELATIVE to earth. That's the whole point of special relativity theory. I don't know where you got the idea of absolute space and time. Measurements are all relative to time t. So there is no confusion regarding change in measurement with respect to change in time from t1 and t2. Einstein showed us how to reconcile differences in measurement arising from different frames of reference.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are mixing up information and information processing. The 1's and 0's are information stored in the computer hard disk regardless whether your computer is on or off. Otherwise you will lose all your files once you turn off your computer.
If molecular arrangements require the translation of an intelligent mind to become information, then your yellow flower wouldn't exist. Flowers existed before humans. The specific instructions on how to turn a seed to a flower are contained in the molecular arrangement of the seed's DNA. Information existed before humans.
My original point is information is an orderly arrangement of matter. You started talking about information processing. Yes you can process the same set of information in different ways but that doesn't change the definition of what information is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo perceive anything, the human mind needs to process something. What is that something? Electrical and chemical signals traveling in the nervous system to the brain forming an arrangement of neuron cells (information). You can interpret your sensation in different ways but it is still an arrangement of neuron cells in your brain.
Quantum mechanics and relativity tell us how we perceive things in the process of observation. Again, this is about information processing, not about what information is.
I think you're trying to define what reality is; whether our perceptions are real or not. That is metaphysics. Physics only deals with what we can calculate and measure. This is why philosophically inclined physicists can agree on the calculations and experimental results but disagree on its interpretation about the nature of reality. They agree on physics but disagree on metaphysics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI only talk about physics. I heed Wittgenstein's caution that most of metaphysics is nonsense. But this is not a slur on philosophers.
All sounds good - but what is it you are measuring?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlato advocated that 'Forms' are neither mental nor physical, but nevertheless it is clear they exist.
If they are not physical nor mental then what are physicists measuring?
So, let me get this right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe experimenters created a field such that the bead was inhibited from turning anticlock-wise, which made it go down a 'spiral staircase' (things which are inhibited from turning anticlockwise are on a spiral staircase-- no, it's just an analogy, of course, let's not get literal).
Now, whenever the bead randomly did turn that way, they shut the field, so that it would now not turn clock-wise like it could earlier, to 'go downstairs', but turned anti-clockwise or just stayed as it was.
Ok, now we get to what I don't understand. Why isn't the analogy now 'we tilted the stairs'? Why is it 'shutting the door with a Maxwell's demon'? Is it that we might realise that the parameters were now different and we are now looking at a Different Process, one that prods the bead in a different direction? Naturally, you would expect the bead to do a different thing if the forces on it are different.
So, can we please have some data instead of analogies? Did the bead turn anticlock-wise, net, after all its random moves? By how much? Was the amount significant compared to the highest observed random move (or series of moves) in either direction? Compared to just being left alone without any fields on it? How many times was this observation repeated (sample size)? Finally, what are the units of measurement in determining an 'information-to-energy conversion efficiency of 28%'?
You know, I can much more easily prove free anti-gravity by running about catching spray above a waterfall, because I got this water Above The Height of the Fall, and there wasn't any energy expended either (no, don't count my running about, I can leave a cup there, and it, too, will get filled over time).
Will my experiment get written up, too? Or do I need it to be at nano scale first?