Slashdot Mirror
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? :)"
*ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM* What the hell was that? Oh, it was this conversation *flying over my head*. I never knew that anyone who knew this much about quantum mechanics had time to read slashdot. :)
The answer is correct but your reasoning is false.
You took a bad example. The electron spin can only take values of plus or minus one half relative to an arbitrary quantization axis. When you measure the electron spin, you always measure one of the two of possible states, meaning that you can store exactly one bit in the electron spin.
If you want to store more data in an electron, you have to use another physical quantity which has more possible states. (in qm jargon: Use an observable with has more (infinite) eigenstates). This is what the article talks about, they are using the "place" quantity (observable). As is easy to imagine, this observable has an infinity number of possible values (eigenstates): an electron can be anywhere.
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
My
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
Don't you watch Star Trek?
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-
We'll have Heisenberg compensators to take care of that.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-- 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