Maxwell’s Demon; An INFERNOS Project Nanoscale Experiment

Maxwell's Demon is an imaginary creature that the mathematician
James Clerk Maxwell created in 1897. The creature could turn heat into
work without causing any other change, which seemed to violate the second
law of thermodynamics, Entropy.

In 1930, Leo Szilard quantitatively analyzed "Maxwell's Demon," finding
reduction in entropy is possible when an intelligent being interacts with a
thermodynamic system.

Szilard

It appears that the ignorance of biological phenomena need
not prevent us from understanding ...Intelligent beings – insofar as we
are dealing with their intervention in a thermodynamic system – can be
replaced by non-living devices whose “biological phenomena” one
could follow and determine whether in fact a compensation of the
entropy decrease takes place as a result of the intervention by such
a device in the system.
splasho.com...

Well, that brings to mind a few DARPA projects as of late.

In 2010, For the first time, scientists converted information into pure energy,
experimentally verifying Maxwells Demon.

www.livescience.com...

Now, Project INFERNOS (Information, fluctuations, and energy control in small
systems) is taking on Maxwells Demon experimentally; in other words, to develop
the electronic and biomolecular nanodevices that support this principle to be applied
in fields like biology or computer science; and for instance, DNA replication etc.

The primary goal of the European project INFERNOS is to realize
experimentally Maxwell’s Demon; in other words, to develop the electronic
and biomolecular nanodevices that support this principle.

The project is centred on considering information as a thermodynamic
parameter. Its ideas may be applied to different fields of knowledge,
like biology or computer science. For instance, DNA replication, a basic
biological process, can be described as the action of small thermodynamic
devices which are able to copy information....

From the theory side, researchers will work in order to develop a theory of
the fluctuation processes in small systems, which would then facilitate
efficient algorithms for the Maxwell’s Demon operation.
www.nanowerk.com...=32683.php#ixzz2hzjAoKyH

Its ideas may be applied to different fields of knowledge, like
biology or computer science. For instance, DNA replication, a basic
biological process, can be described as the action of small thermodynamic
devices that are able to copy information....

“We aim at creating a device that can use information to
supply/extract energy to/from a system”.
www.kurzweilai.net...

Should be quite interesting to see what comes from this one.
This will be a complete game changer, imo.

Further reading:
www.informationphilosopher.com...
phys.org...

Project INFERNOS

INFERNOS is a three-year European project of the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) program.

ltl.tkk.fi...

More on Maxwells Demon



A thought experiment that seems to
defy the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics


Who knows, maybe in time or out of time.
A perpetual warm cup of tea, and self repicating monsters.

reply to post by burntheships


When man can create life from scratch maybe we can re-purpose churches for something useful.

reply to post by InverseLookingGlass


Ah, but first answer me this;
What is life?

Meh. AFAIK this was all settled long ago with a classic proof of why you can't extract energy from Johnson noise. IIRC it's applicable to Maxwell's Demon problems as well.

I believe it's Szilard's proof, reading the article. Observing the particle requires more energy than can be extracted from it. Something the article sort of handwaves.

reply to post by Bedlam



Which article?

So, I take it your a skeptic?

reply to post by InverseLookingGlass


The bible itself says man is capable of being "like" god. After the discovery of knowledge, man creating life would fit into most judeo-Christian theologies.

But any digg at religion you can get right?

Information as energy...isn't that what physical matter is? Information, a pattern, established as energy and bound in a state of low vibration. Something like taking lightning and putting it inside of a battery. Whatever information that energy holds, the matter will conform to it, won't it?

reply to post by AfterInfinity



It is energy information equivalence in that there is a conversion taking place.
at least as much as I can explain it.

Toyabe and colleagues have observed this energy-information equivalence by varying an electric field so that it represents a kind of spiral staircase. The difference in electrical potential between successive steps on the staircase is kT, meaning that a thermally fluctuating particle placed in the field will occasionally jump up a step but more often than not it will take a step downwards. What the researchers did was to intervene so that whenever the particle does move upwards they place the equivalent of a barrier behind it, preventing the particle from falling beyond this point. Repeating the process allows it to gradually climb the staircase.

physicsworld.com...

I can not seem to upload an image, which is a bummer.

reply to post by Bedlam

Processes taking place on the nanoscale are completely different to those
we are familiar with, and information is part of that picture.

Christian Van den Broeck, University of Hasselt

burntheships
reply to post by Bedlam

 

Which article?

So, I take it your a skeptic?

edit on 17-10-2013 by burntheships because: (no reason given)

The livescience one - you did post a bunch of them.

I don't think you can derive net energy from random noise, whether it's Johnson noise or thermal kinetic noise, no.

In the small and temporary, yes - for instance, evaporation cooling is a macroscale example of fast particles leaving the slower particles behind in the liquid, which drops the temperature of the liquid. That shows what on the surface appears to be a violation of thermodynamics, in that a system spontaneously goes to a higher level of thermal differential. But if you look at the thing in the large, the liquid had to be condensed from vapor at some point, and the budget balances.

This doesn't seem to have the same loop. If you could get net power from Johnson noise, it would be a perpetual motion system of the second kind, and so would this be, as the effect is pretty similar, just one is molecular and the other electronic.

AfterInfinity
Information as energy...isn't that what physical matter is? Information, a pattern, established as energy and bound in a state of low vibration. Something like taking lightning and putting it inside of a battery. Whatever information that energy holds, the matter will conform to it, won't it?

edit on 17-10-2013 by AfterInfinity because: (no reason given)

It's been said that energy is the catalyst for information transfer. By Kantor, I think.

But no, it's not what matter is, and there is no "state of low vibration", that's a new age meme that doesn't really relate to physics. At least not the way you're using it.

burntheships
reply to post by Bedlam

 

Processes taking place on the nanoscale are completely different to those
we are familiar with, and information is part of that picture.

Christian Van den Broeck, University of Hasselt

That's true as far as it goes. Go ask him about whether that includes perpetual motion machines of the second kind.

reply to post by burntheships


The energy required in placing and removal of the barrier, as well as the energy required to observe the particle's state will end up being more than the particle acquires. Or exactly the same.

Oddly, I believe this covers obtaining energy from thermal fluctuation noise and Johnson noise, but it's something only about a half dozen ATSers can appreciate. Looking for something without differential equations.

Linky

Ah. Got it. What you want to look at is the Smoluchowski quantum ratchet proof. Feynmann goes over it in the Feynmann lecture series, 11 May 1962.

It's the proof that Brownian motion can't be used to provide net energy.

eta: a more readable paper

etfa: this is a hideously formatted text file, but it gives some nice references if you've got access to them. It addresses the issue again - "However, Astumian [A97,A01] discusses how latched or ratcheted molecular movement is feasible in many cases (and used by many biological motors) if there is a source of external potential energy fueling the movement.", and this is exactly what you're getting with the livescience article's putting up and taking down electric fields. It's exactly equivalent to Feynmann's switching the ratchet on and off, and again, the energy it requires to do this is more than you get from the thermal energy. However, biological motors do use the Brownian motion as a sort of dithering signal. It gets too mathy for ATS. Linky

This entire class of machine falls under "Brownian Motor", "Johnson noise rectifier" and possibly "Feynmann ratchet". The math and physics seems identical to what's in the OP's articles.

Jackpot! They've put the ratchet chapter up on the web. Read it from Feynmann himself

Further jackpot! I found some of Feynmann's video lectures online here. It takes a long time to load, but it covers a lot of basic physics as taught by a near deity of physics. With annotations.

Bedlam
Ah. Got it. ....... It takes a long time to load, but it covers a lot of basic physics as taught by
a near deity of physics. With annotation.

Dear Bedlam,

Thank you bunches, I was counting on someone like you,
well....you.

Cheers, going to look now.

Not that this wouldn't be shiny, if it was true. If you could rectify Johnson noise for a net power output, it would be the end of fossil fuels. And it would solve global warming, because the generators would emit coolth in operation. So you could power your house and get free AC at the same time.

eta: putting up and taking down electric fields to serve as barriers uses energy as 1/2 cv^2f, where c is the capacitance the thingy putting the fields up and down perceives to be present in the apparatus, v square is the voltage level of the field squared and f is the frequency at which it goes on and off. It's not a free operation, sad to say.

reply to post by Bedlam


And so therin lies the dilemma, they may only perfect it
as to control it, as everything that is released is controlled.

reply to post by burntheships


In this case, I don't think you've got a lot to worry about. Now, Dr Bussard's fusion reactor, that's probably not going to see the civilian light of day. Maybe you'll see the Skunk Works' version of it. But I wouldn't hold my breath on that one either. Pity.

reply to post by Bedlam


Oh your right there, fossil fuels it is for now...
in which your quite rignt again, it is a bit of a let down
to say the least...all the while an expensive resource/scarcity
only to later become obsolete?

Insanity.