It is possible to use information to extract energy, or work, at the quantum level, according to a new study.
Thermodynamics is one of the most human of scientific enterprises, says Kater Murch, associate professor of physics at Washington University in St. Louis. “It has to do with our fascination of fire and our laziness,” he says. “How can we get fire”—or heat—”to do work for us?”
Now, Murch and colleagues have taken that most human enterprise down to the intangible quantum scale—that of ultra-low temperatures and microscopic systems—and discovered that, as in the macroscopic world, extracting work with information is possible.