

Researchers create a Maxwell’s demon with a single electron - sizzle
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/09/researchers-create-a-maxwells-demon-with-a-single-electron/

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flatline
What a well-written article - good lay description of the problem and the
results, doesn't go off the deep end with wild speculation of technical jargon
which may or may not be entirely accurate.

I'm not terribly surprised by the results - if you stop to think about it the
demon in the original experiment is potentially expending quite a bit of work
to observe the gas molecules and open and close the gate.

~~~
daveloyall
I agree for the most part, but it would have been nice for the article to
mention _how much_ energy it takes to flip a bit, and whether or not that
value varies in different circumstances.

A flipped bit can mean the difference between tons of snow falling down a
mountainside or staying where it is. (Down force greater than stuck force? OK,
avalanche!) Does _that_ bit cost the same energy as the one described in the
article?

If so, I deeply care _how much_ energy that is!

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GregBuchholz
Some of my favorite paper's on Maxwell's demon are:

[http://www2.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/ExorcistXIV/Exorcist1....](http://www2.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/ExorcistXIV/Exorcist1.pdf)

[http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/ExorcistXIV/Exorcist2.p...](http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/ExorcistXIV/Exorcist2.pdf)

...and to ease into things, an article by one of the authors:

"The Simplest Exorcism of Maxwell's Demon -- No Information Needed"

[http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/exorcism_phase_vol/exo...](http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/exorcism_phase_vol/exorcism_phase_vol.html)

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leni536
Once I saw a presentation where they did something similar but with trapping a
single atom with lasers [1]. Basically Szilard's engine is a clever "toy"
model for predicting Landauer's principle [2] that they verified.

[1]
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7388/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7388/full/nature10872.html)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle)

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pervycreeper
>Researchers create Maxwell’s demon with a single electron.

Edit: note the lack of indefinite article.

