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Can One Electron Hold Infinite Data?
Geoffrey Kidd writes: "There's a very interesting article
at EE Times about some research which seems to indicate
that an essentially unlimited number of bits can be stored in ONE electron. Hmmm. What if one
could encode every .mp3 file on Napster in one electron? :)"
If one electron holds infinite data, how much do two electrons hold?
First off, at the sort of level you're talking about (single electrons), you're talking about a world that obeys Quantum Mechanics, not Newtonian Mechanics.
This makes a big difference. Newtonian Mechanics is essentially continuous. Regardless of how close any two points are, Newtonian Mechanics assumes that there are still an infinite number of points between them, and that this can be repeated indefinitely.
Quantum Mechanics is a strange land of discrete points with NO space between them, as far as the particle(s) under consideration are concerned. Particles jump from one state to another, WITHOUT passing any intermediate point.
This means that what "should" be inifinite, given a purely Newtonian view of the world, will always become finite in a Quantum Mechanical view of the world.
Space, Time, Energy - these are ALL quantized.
The practical upshot? You may be able to store a LOT of information in an electron, but it won't be infinite. And how much you CAN store depends on what valid states there exist at that time, which may or may not remain the same over time.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I didn't see it mentioned, but this must be taking place at very low temperatures.
When I hear about cool, promising advances like this is always makes me sorry for the SETI types. How the aliens will laugh themselves silly at our hopeful sifting of the *radio*/stone-age technology spectrum for traces of them, when an advanced civilization would have stupendously cooler ''magic'' at their disposal.
It turns out that there are an infinite number of energy states between the ground state and the ionization threshold (look at a diagram of Hydrogen energy levels to see what I mean), so the amount of energy available is not a limiting factor. One practical limit is that the highly excited states are very closely spaced in energy. At some point they get too close for your apparatus to reliably read and write them. Also, when the thermal noise becomes comparable to the the spacing between states you are going to run into problems. I didn't notice any mention of temperature in the article, but I suspect they had to keep things pretty cold to avoid getting killed by noise.
So, from the sound of it, it seems like you might conceivably be able to get down to something like one atom per register (which is still pretty amazing), but don't hold your breath waiting for a single-electron replacement for your HD, or even your L2 cache, for that matter.
-rpl
You are correct.....except that it is known that space-time _should_ also be quantized, so there is no such thing as "continuous eigenstates" , that's because QM is incomplete : we have not figured out quantum gravity yet (i.e. where it is believed that space-time curvature is also quantized).
I know..I know, all QM books say there are continuous eigenstates. But that's because QM works on the Minkowski flat space-time metric which is perceived as "background-fixed", i.e. not a dynamic metric like General Relativity's metric. The goal of physicists is to find a way to make QM "background-free", i.e. does not rely on a fixed-metric, or put it another way, to "quantize gravity" (which nobody really knows what it means, but people believed it means quantizing the dynamic metric, or "quantizing Space-Time").
So the people is pursuing a dream that is not viable.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
One of the challenges encountered with increasingly smaller data storage media is the possible damage caused by stray radiation... at this scale, one alpha particle could ruin your whole database! (or maybe one x-ray, or static electric shock, etc.)
Although it is interesting to see just how much information could be encoded in a single electron, one would need some redundant electrons in other atoms to also encode the same information. (Think:RAQE a Redundant Array of Quantum Electrons.)
Further, if we can step away from the concept of trying to encode EVERYTHING in just ONE electron, and take a look at how much information can easily and reliably be encoded in one electron (pulls a number out of his hat) say 4 bits, and one has (pulling another number out of his hat), say 10 electrons for redundancy, that's still one heck of a dense recording medium! Several terabytes of data could be stored in a very small space!
How small a space? There's the unanswered question of just how close together these can be packed and uniquely targeted by the laser. (Or lasers, to speed reading/writing to the electrons.) I see issues with just trying to keep the atoms in a fixed location, how finely focused the laser beams can be adjusted, etc.
Still, this sure holds promise for one incredibly dense storage medium for all my MP3s!
Call me cynical, but do those guys up in Slashland use MadLibs as a base for their stories?
[person] writes, "[person, lab] has
[verb]'d a way to [verb] the [noun]".
Wow. How many [contested file format]'s
could you [verb] with this??
[person] writes, "the [hated industry]
is [verb]ing [loved individual]". Ya know,
there used to be a day when [verb] was not
only legal but encouraged.
[person] writes, "a [greek letter] release
of [obscure linux app] has just hit [release
site]'s page. Hoo boy, now our world is
[adjective].
</HUMOR>
.02
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Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
Don't you watch Star Trek?
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
We'll have Heisenberg compensators to take care of that.
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Yes.
(though it depends wholy on the detail in which you can measure the state)
Imagine an arrow. It can spin on it's centre of gravity 360 degrees. If it points directly left the bit value is 1. If it points right the bit value is 0.
Going clockwise, pointing at the bottom half is for values the start with 0, the top half is for bit values starting with 1. Both have 180 degrees freedom of movement. Breaking the 180 degrees of each half into 2 points (3 sections) defines the second bit value. Iterate.
Keep going and breaking smaller and smaller sections to define further bit values. 60 degrees down left would be 00, etc...
Any real world thing (a bicycle for example) has an infinite number of possible states and your ability to reap binary values stops only at the limits of your measuring equipment.
(you know, I spend too much time amusing myself.)
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all