Pioneering research offers a fascinating view into the inner workings of the mind of 'Maxwell's Demon', a famous thought experiment in physics.
An international research team, including Dr Janet Anders from the University of Exeter, have used superconducting circuits to bring the 'demon' to life.
The demon, first proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in 1867, is a hypothetical being that can gain more useful energy from a thermodynamic system than one of the most fundamental laws of physics—the second law of thermodynamics—should allow.
Crucially, the team not only directly observed the gained energy for the first time, they also tracked how information gets stored in the demon's memory.
The research is published in the leading scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-physicists-maxwell-demon-mind.html#jCp
Pioneering research offers a fascinating view into the inner workings of the mind of 'Maxwell's Demon', a famous thought experiment in physics.
An international research team, including Dr Janet Anders from the University of Exeter, have used superconducting circuits to bring the 'demon' to life.
The demon, first proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in 1867, is a hypothetical being that can gain more useful energy from a thermodynamic system than one of the most fundamental laws of physics—the second law of thermodynamics—should allow.
Crucially, the team not only directly observed the gained energy for the first time, they also tracked how information gets stored in the demon's memory.
The research is published in the leading scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).