{"id":132396,"date":"2021-12-14T10:22:31","date_gmt":"2021-12-14T18:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/researchers-design-an-engine-that-uses-information-as-fuel"},"modified":"2021-12-14T10:22:31","modified_gmt":"2021-12-14T18:22:31","slug":"researchers-design-an-engine-that-uses-information-as-fuel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/researchers-design-an-engine-that-uses-information-as-fuel","title":{"rendered":"Researchers design an engine that uses information as fuel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KR23aMjIHIY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Can information become a source of energy? Scientists from Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Canada devised an ultrafast engine that claims to operate on information, potentially opening up a groundbreaking new frontier in humanity\u2019s search for new kinds of fuel. The study, published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/content\/118\/20\/e2023356118\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em><\/a> (PNAS), describes how the researchers turned the movements of tiny particles into stored energy.<\/p>\n<p><b>Practical demon-keeping<\/b><\/p>\n<p>How would an information engine even work? The idea for such a contraption, which at first sounds like it would break the laws of physics, was first proposed by the Scottish scientist James Clerk Maxwell back in 1867. Colorfully named \u201cMaxwell\u2019s demon,\u201d such a machine would theoretically achieve something akin to perpetual motion. Maxwell\u2019s<a href=\"https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/how-maxwells-demon-continues-to-startle-scientists-20210422\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> thought experiment<\/a> was meant to show that it may be possible to violate the second law of thermodynamics, which basically states that the amount of entropy, or disorder, always increases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can information become a source of energy? Scientists from Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Canada devised an ultrafast engine that claims to operate on information, potentially opening up a groundbreaking new frontier in humanity\u2019s search for new kinds of fuel. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), describes how the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}