There’s a Secret Way to Get to Absolute Zero. Scientists Just Found It. – Popular Mechanics

Were not getting to absolute zero anytime soon. The temperature at which all energy in an object drops to zero, our inability to reach it is enshrined in the third law of thermodynamics.

One version of the law states that in order to reach absolute zero, wed have to either have infinite time or infinite energy. Thats not happening any time soon, so out the window go our hopes of achieving a total lack of energy.

Or do they?

A team from the Vienna University of Technology in Austria wanted to see if there was alternate route to absolute zero. And they found one in an interesting placequantum computing.

The researchers entered into their research with the intent of trying to generate a version of the third law of thermodynamics that jived cleanly with quantum physics. Because the regular version that so many physicists know and love doesnt quite fit nicely into the quantum world.

Disagreements between classical and quantum physics happen all the timeits why so much time and effort goes into trying to find a unified theory of physics that encompasses both sets of rules. That doesnt mean classical physics is wrong, it just means its limited in ways that we didnt expect when we first were figuring out how the universe works.

The third law of thermodynamics, despite how fundamental it is, is one of those surprisingly limited aspects of classical physics. In saying that we cant reach absolute zero without infinite time or infinite energy, it doesnt fully take a fundamental aspect quantum physicsinformation theoryinto account.

A principle of information theory called the Landauer principle states that there is a minimum, and finite, amount of energy that it takes to delete a piece of information. The catch here is that deleting information from a particle is the exact same thing as taking that particle to absolute zero. So, how is it possible that it takes a finite amount of energy to delete information and an infinite amount of energy to reach absolute zero, if those two things are the same?

It's not a total paradoxyou could take an infinitely long time. But that doesnt tell the whole story. The team discovered a key parameter that would get it done a whole lot fastercomplexity. It turns out that if you have complete, infinite control over an infinitely complex system, you can bring fully delete information from a quantum particle without the need for infinite energy or infinite time.

Now, is infinite complexity with infinite control more achievable than infinite time or infinite energy? No. Were still dealing with infinities here.

But this discovery does emphasize known limitations in the functionality of quantum computers. Namely, once we start saving information on those things, were never going to be able to fully scrub the information from the quantum bits (known as qubits) making up our information storage centers.

According to experts, thats not going to present a practical issue. Machines that operate absolutely perfectly already dont exist, so theres no reason to hold quantum computers to an unreachable standard. But it does teach us a bit more about exactly what building and operating these futuristic machines is going to take.

When it comes to quantum, were just getting started.

Associate News Editor

Jackie is a writer and editor from Pennsylvania. She's especially fond of writing about space and physics, and loves sharing the weird wonders of the universe with anyone who wants to listen. She is supervised in her home office by her two cats.

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There's a Secret Way to Get to Absolute Zero. Scientists Just Found It. - Popular Mechanics