According to the editors of the authoritative publication Physical Review Letters, the most striking research of the year was the development of the knowledge engine, which was literally fueled by it. The prototype engine did its job purely by computation, without wasting any energy on it. Unfortunately, this discovery only works in the microcosm.

We all know about such a phenomenon as thermal noise. In a normal situation, thermal fluctuations are random and cannot do useful work. It is possible to correct the situation with the help of feedback – information that can cut off the “inhibitory” oscillations and correct the “workers”. Then the engine would only do useful work each time, without wasting energy on it in the form of fuel. The role of fuel in such a system is played by information – it is a system that controls the engine, determines perfect operation and feedback.

A team of physicists from Simon Fraser University and the Institute for Fundamental Questions (FQXi) in Burnaby, British Columbia conducted an experiment in which a bacteria-sized glass bead was moved in a specific direction using information about thermal noise and position. . The bead was placed in water and caught in a laser trap. The thermal vibrations of the water molecules pushed the bead in all possible directions, but the optical trap, which measures its position and feedback in the water, only moved through space when the motion was right (and kept the bead at a new level). direction.

Scientists note that the accuracy of determining the position of the bead in space leaves much to be desired, and therefore the operation of the “information” engine of the robot is low. It was possible to improve the efficiency of the engine after including the so-called “Bayes decision evaluation” in the algorithm – a statistical method that predicts in many ways by measuring the new position of the bead.

In fact, the “fuel” of such an engine was only knowledge of the approximate location of the bead obtained by measurement, a calculation algorithm that reduces the measurement error, and a feedback mechanism that fixes the bead (work done) at a new level. . The working process was carried out with thermal noise. You could say it’s free. Now scientists are considering experiments on how to do similar work with other noise sources. If everything goes well, it will be possible to obtain energy from sources that the world has not yet dreamed of.