Future Hi: The World in a Pebble

June 11, 2004

The World in a Pebble

In a comment liquis mentioned an article from 2001 in EE Times: "Quantum laser turns electron wave into memory". Some researchers have experimented with encoding information into the wave states of electrons. Or, rather, one electron appears to be enough:

How many electrons does it take to remember the entire contents of the Library of Congress? Only one, according to University of Michigan professor Philip Bucksbaum. Since electrons, like all elementary particles, are actually waves, Bucksbaum has found a way to phase-encode any number of ones and zeros along a single electron's continuously oscillating waveform.

"Our work in quantum-phase registers is highly experimental, but theoretically there is really no limit to how long a string of 1s and 0s you can store in one," said Bucksbaum.

As there are an unlimited number of possible positions in a wave, and by modulating the phase, one can access them. At least theoretically. They apparently proved the concept, but were far off from putting it into practical applicaton.

Posted by Flemming at June 11, 2004 09:10 AM | TrackBack

Comments

I am now convinced that the grandest of breakthroughs in physics are done by people under 25. I don't consider myself a true genius, certainly not anymore, but when I was 23 after completing 4 years of physics education, I had a dream one night that you could store unlimited amounts of information on an electron by modulating its wave function. I even went so far as to develop the basic equations and submitted this proposal to my professor who told me I was insane and threw it back at me. Not having the self-confidence I believed him enough to shelve the idea. I never let go of this notion however, and always harbored the idea that at some point someone would figure the same thing out, as it seemed COMPLETELY OBVIOUS at the time. I felt it's realization was inevitable, and didn't feel motivated to work on it anymore.

Makes me wonder if I had had the ego to continue forward with it, what would have happened. :)

Posted by: Paul Hughes at June 11, 2004 11:17 AM

Now I'd like to know what the theoretic maximum amount of information you could store on an electron. I suspect it's limited by Plancks constant. Even if that were the case you're talking about 10^35 bits of information which would be enough to store the contents of billions of peoples entire lifetimes of memories. Combine this with quantum computing and some elegant method of finessing it to do non-combinatoric calculations and you could conceivably have super-advanced entities existing as a small collection of electrons and nano-sized quantum computer. Maybe that's where all the aliens are. lol.

Posted by: Paul Hughes at June 11, 2004 11:24 AM

Heheh, yeah, they're hiding inside an electron supercomputer AI, which already has solved all the riddles of the universe. And it is up your left nostril. Oh, damn, where did it go?

Maybe somebody already did it on a wide scale, and each electron already contains a simulated universe run by an advanced collective intelligence. And you and I are but phase patterns in one wave.

Posted by: Flemming Funch at June 11, 2004 12:07 PM

Yep, I was in communication with a super-advanced race of cosmic tricksters when suddenly I sneezed and lost contact.

This idea makes me wonder if scale like size eventually turns in on itself. That if we go small enough, do we will eventually come back to where we started? I think this idea is in line with the Holographic Universe theory.

No doubt, Dr. Seuss was inspirational in this line of thinking.

Posted by: Paul Hughes at June 11, 2004 12:38 PM