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Quantum Information Can be Negative
nerdlygirl writes "In a development that would probably even puzzle Claude Shannon,
information can be negative -- at least when the information is quantum.
The discovery, by
Horodecki, Oppenheim, and Winter, appears in the
current edition of the leading journal Nature.
If I tell you negative information, you'll know less. Apparently, researchers hope to use this to gain deeper insights into phenomena such as quantum teleportation and computation, as well as the very structure of the quantum world. More details can be found here and
here
A popular account of the article can be found on Oppenheim's
homepage, and a free version of the article can be found in the arxiv for those of us
without subscriptions to Nature."
Karl Rove has known this for years.
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
No it can't.
Initially, I believed that negative information was an abstract math concept, but after a significant amount of additional study I've determined rather conclusively that it exists in our frame of reference and that the effects are actually easy to detect. The trick is to *locate* some of this negative information. Fortunately, I've managed to work that out as well -- I'm not publishing for a few months yet, but I figure I'm far enough along to spill some of the beans:
Experiencing negative inforamtion is all about occupying a point in space and time which intersects with the negative information stream. This was initially tricky, but through months of tireless research I've worked out the optimal conditions: I find that your best chance of encountering it is roughly around 1 AM when you're at the bar with your friends after a long night of drinking and one of them says something along the lines of, "Awright! Time for some shots!"
Bang! Negative information. What happened after that? How did I get home? All lost in the quantum flow, never to be accurately described by anyone involved (except, occasionally and for reasons I still haven't managed to factor into my equations, the bouncer and the police). I assume the headaches and liver damage are just a nominal side effect.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
If I tell you negative information, you'll know less. Sounds like what happened in that mind numbing English class I had to take last semester.
it was negative information so I forgot how to get my socks in the dirty clothes.
After trying to read those articles, I do feel like I know less.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
Considering some of the posters here, I wouldn't be surprised if that were discovered.
Want a high quality FOSS RTS game? Try Warzone 2100!
Of course negative information is cool, but it would be even cooler if you could combine negative information and positive information to produce a huge explosion.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
If I tell you negative information, you'll know less.
So, if two people tell me negative information, I'll know more?
If I tell you negative information, you'll know less.
I experience this almost everytime I speak to my boss.
Since a black hole's entropy is directly proportional to it's information content, this, if true, would have an effect on black holes.
If I recall correctly (and I may not -- my physics isn't what it used to be), the amount of information contained by a black hole is directly proportional to its surface area -- specifically, I believe that the total number of bits contained is equal to 1/4 of its surface area as measured in Planck units.
Now, if information can be negative, that would provide another method of shrinking a black hole, in addition to Hawking radiation.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If I tell you negative information, you'll know less.
I don't think that really works. You can't make someone know less by just telling them something, unless by doing so you somehow alter their brain chemistry to store less information or remove information already stored. I suspect this might be closer to the quantum idea.
Suppose you have two pieces of quantum information, one positive and one negative. The negative piece could negate the positive one which would result in 0 total pieces of information instead of 2.
However, the idea of this negative information is still kind of abstract and not that easy to understand. The quantum nature of this is key I think. It doesn't look like it extends that well to our concept of information (which would be the kind stored by the brain), at least not yet.
You should try browsing at -1 sometime! You'll wish you knew less...
This article is not bogus.
The concept of a "quantum eraser" is not a new one. Consider the classic double-slit experiment, where electrons are shot at a double slit and form an interference pattern on a screen which corresponds to the probability distribution of the particle's position. If you were to place detectors so that you knew which slit the particle went through, the interference pattern would disappear-- that is, there would be no uncertainty in the position (because obviously, you know which slit it went through). This is intuitive if you consider the interference pattern to be a probability distribution.
However, if you were to place a 50/50 beam splitter in front of the detectors, the interference pattern would reappear! By destryong the which-path information, the interference pattern (uncertainty) is restored. Bizarre, but true.
Google "quantum eraser" for more info.
"Apparently, researchers hope to use this to gain deeper insights..."
Taking into consideration the sentence before that, it seems like the hope of those researchers is unfounded... Irony.
"One thing only I know, and that is that I know less than nothing" - Socratum
If I tell you negative information, you'll know less.
So, American television programming has been giving us negative information
for decades now....
What exactly do you mean by this?
But one day Tom, he went and caught the River-daughter, in green gown, flowing hair, sitting in the rushes
What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
All this time I wondered how so many people could be so stupid as to believe the mountains of bullshit pushed by the creationist movement, and this explains it!
As information regarding the field of biology -- specifically in the study of evolution -- increases, a balance must be made. As a result, the increase of information in biology causes a reaction of an equal increase of negative information with respect to the creationist movement. The more biologists figure out and the more knowledgable experts become, the dumber and more gullible the general populace must become to balance the information flow out.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
He wrote, "The scholar learns something every day, the man of tao unlearns something every day, until he gets back to non-doing."
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
The truth of the Time Cube surrounds even the most educated stupid researches of us. -(1) + -(1) = +(A North American).
I have freaks! I did something right...
Would it be accurate to analogize this to antimatter, in the sense that the latter was found mathematically first, and observed later (and maybe not yet)?
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Browse at -1
I distinctly remember a lecture by Feynman at Caltech in the early 1980's where he talked about negative information (probability). I am sure I still have notes for it somewhere. Of course, you can never see negative information; any actual measurement has to have positive probility. But it can give quantum interference effects in measured quantities.
Feynman presented it as just a different way of having quantum interference, from negative probability instead of complex amplitudes.
IANAQM (I am not a quantum mechanic) but lets say you know a set of information about something and someone else knows a different set of information about the same thing and together these sets of information add up to more information than is actually needed to describe that something then it stands to reason there is also a third set of information that is negative, that is, it describes what you shouldn't know about something in order to be able to describe it properly!
The phone digit analogy used in Oppenheim's homepage is pretty good. If Bob knows 15 digits of Alices 10 digit phone number then Alice needs to tell Bob that 5 digits with a certain configuration are not needed - and in doing so makes future communications about telephone numbers easier!
Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
The article calls this a measurement of the quality of the information, which they say has no bearing on the quantity. The thing about quantum information is that due to the fact that the amount of information contained can lessen by measuring the information, it is actually possible to know more about a quantum object than actually describes it. Think of it more like looking at a comet in space. You can learn more about it by hitting it with explosives and measuring the spectral result, but in doing so you are actually destroying bits of the comet. So eventually, you can know all about an object that doesn't actually exist. Of course, unlike comets, quantum objects can be both there and not there at the same time; the time factor of it being destroyed after it has been measured is effectively removed.
That's not really how you use that word. His spell checker must have provided negative information.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Geez, don't be so cynical. After I got my PhD from Berkeley, with a dissertation in quantum mechanics, I taught the stuff to graduate students for five years or so. I've published QM papers in PRA and all that, too. So, yeah, I know what they mean. I'm perfectly qualified to review their Nature paper, if it comes to that, and I doubt I'm the only one like this reading /.
I have to say I'm not especially impressed by the work, however. The frisson of defining information as negative emerges ultimately from a semi-deliberate muddling of the distinction between the definition of information in the quantum computing context and information as we use the word in daily life. This is not hard useful scientific discovery so much as the scientific equivalent of making an outrageous pun.
But then I feel similarly about most of what's published in the Bell's Inequality, EPR paradox, quantum tele-whatever field. Getting cynical myself, maybe I am....bah, humbug...grumble...
The trick is that you can use quantum entanglement to have excess unspecified knowledge, which can be converted into specific knowledge. It's like being on a quiz show where you are given a certain number of times you can look up an answer. These bonuses have to count in your total knowledge (I know 100 facts, plus I can look up things twice). If someone tells you something, you get positive information. If you look something up, you get zero information (you trade a bonus lookup for a fact). If you look something up, and you already knew the answer, you get negative information.
Now think about it as if someone else controlled the book. They can tell you things over the phone, and they can cause answers to pop out of the book. If they waste the book on something you actually already knew, your total information goes down, so the information in the transaction is negative.
Well, there are particles in QM that have to be roatated a full 720 degrees to complete a full rotation.
Couldn't a probability of 2.0 be taken to mean that two atoms are going to be created using one atoms complete energy to create antimatter. One atom being the antimatter, and one being normal matter. When these two pieces of information meet, they anhilate each other and all the information about each other if their informations are completely equal.
I could be completely and utterly wrong, but I think that's what happens when they make antimatter.
Sig
Nah, that just bolsters my theory that the liver is actually not a poison-processing organ, but actually a secondary brain, which, through evolution, has been developed to counter the quantum effects of "negative information". Information such as, "I really shouldn't have another drink", and "I really shouldn't kiss that person, especially with my wife in the restroom", and "Oh, so that's how I wrecked the car" and "Here is why you don't tell the nice police officer what I think of him and his family." Unfortunately, evolution hasn't quite gotten around to hooking up the necessary signaling nerves to make this information available to the other brain that has actual control over motor functions. Oh well, maybe next species.
Here's a straightforward example of negative information.
Suppose there are 3 possible outcomes of an experiment: A, B, and C. A priori you know that A is 98% likely, B is 1% likely and C is 1% likely. Your uncertainty (i.e. entropy) about the outcome is quite low (because you are almost sure that the outcome is A). Now it is revealed that the outcome is not A. Your new probabilities are 50% on B and C. Your new uncertainty about the outcome is now much higher.
Being told that A did not occur thus has negative information because it increases your uncertainty (i.e. entropy) about the outcome.
The Fine Article doesn't mention one exciting development in the field of information theory, related to negative information, which may one day tie it to Vacuum Energy or Zero Point physics in a grand unified theory that, once we come to understand it, could form the basis of a star drive to power star ships.
It seems that virtual particles of antimatter and exotic particles of normal matter that spontaneously emerge from the void, and then disappear without interacting with anything. [1] The theoretical potential of tapping this particle flux has brought vacuum energy to the fore of research by the NSA into Quantum Information Theory.
Experiments conducted by the NSA and the DOE on large data samples gathered in large bureaucracies (both public and private) indicate that Microsoft Word Documents are effective containers for Negative Information, which hitherto had been considered a transient phenomenon, almost impossible to store given our current understanding of physics. The phenomenon of massive amounts of stored negative informisinformation, as it turns out, makes the typical corporate or government intranet much more resiliant to cyber terrorist attack than previously predicted -- nearly as resiliant as the typical government organization to a FOIA request today, for comparison.
It is expected that once we understand the characteristics of MS Word Documents which allow them to efficiently store negative information in a stable form, Quantum Physicists and Information Theorists should be able to get together, perhaps over a nice hot cup of tea, and stitch the two branches together, getting us one step closer to faster than light travel, finally bringing the stars within reach -- except it won't really be FTL, it will be something that we don't presently understand. [2]
Only the humor-impaired need read this bootnote.
[1]Yes, I see the grammar error. I've intentionally borrowed a pattern, common in conspiracy theory writing, of constructing a complex sentence, perhaps full of objects, perhaps full of verbs, perhaps full of nouns, on the theory that it might amuse, whereas it normally serves to confuse, as sometimes subjects or verbs may go missing. Oops I did it again! Or did I?
[2]Yes, I realize I mention antimatter only in the title, and not in the text.
[3]Yes, I realize there are 3 bootnotes, not a single bootnote as referenced above.
[4]Yes, I realize that only 2 of the bootnotes are indicated by reference numbers in the text. (Absurd bootnotes are also common in conspiracy theorist writings.)
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
In order to learn something, you have to make a measurement. Of course, in the quantum world, measuring a system will change it, so you are giving up what you know by measuring. It seems that in negative information situations, you are giving up your certainty in order to measure something, but your aren't learning anything in return. So your net 'gain' of information is negative.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
All the research I have read points to PowerPoint as a better method of Negative Information storage.
A blog about stuff.
Utter ignorance is the total lack of information, or the complete absence of knowledge. We all know that nowledge is power, and power is force over time. Time is money, so knowledge is force over money. Ergo, someone who is ignorant has no force over money, which is certainly ironic given that the Nature article is entitled "Quantum Information: Putting certainty in the bank". Yes, poor people are easy to make fun of even in quantum states (which were formally known as blue states until the manic depressives complained about trademark infringement).
Or are you saying that the photomultiplier is somehow different because it has a scientist at the end of it?
That's exactly right. It's not the slit or the photomultiplier or anything else that is the detector and causes the loss of uncertainty. It is the scientist that is the detector. It is only when the scientist observes the result of the experiment that the slit the photon actually went through becomes a certainty. Hence the great philosophical debates that surround the study of quantum mechanics.
I'm not taking a side, BTW -- only regurgitating what has already been debated for a long time.