Abstract :
Physicists in Europe have experimentally demonstrated, for the first time, that a theoretical principle limiting modern-day computing is real. In 1961, Rolf Landauer posited that the act of erasing a bit of information gives off an amount of heat equal to kBTln(2), which is the product of Boltzmann´s constant, the temperature, and the natural logarithm of 2-a total of 3 × 10-21 joules at room temperature. Among other things, the theory has been used to address the famous problem of Maxwell´s Demon, a thought experiment that suggested a minute monster could create energy for free by sorting particles by their speed, in apparent violation of the laws of thermodynamics. Charles Bennett applied Landauer´s theory to the problem, arguing that the energy wasn´t free because the demon had to erase a bit of information in its memory in order to sort each particle.
