All the free energy in the universe
Jonathan Rochkind
jrochkin at cs.oberlin.edu
Sat Jul 9 13:28:18 PDT 1994
> The late Nobel laureate Richard Feynman became very interested in the
> subject of computation and physics towards the end of his life. My
> understanding is that he concluded that there was no apparent
> limitation to the amount of computation that could be completed with a
> given amount of free energy. Computation may indeed always dissipate
> energy, but Feyman's conclusion was that this dissipated energy can be
> made arbitrarily small -- that there is no fundamental quantum
> limitation on the amount of computation that can be performed at any
> given mass-energy scale.
Actually, I _think_ I've read an article in a pop-science magazine about
some work of Hawking's that indicated there was a minimum amount of energy
neccesary to do some sort of quanta of computation. (is there such a thing
? I don't know enough about the math, I'm afraid. INformation theory?)
If my memory serves, he used this to hint at a solution to the
"why does time only flow in one direction, when the mathematics are perfectly
symmetrical both ways?" question.
But I could be wrong. Sorry I don't have any better info then you.
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