Archean
Posts: 5,652 +103

Objects don’t possess entropy; observers do. So according to this theory, if two observers delete the same amount of data in memory and one has more knowledge of the data, that user perceives lower entropy and completes the deletion using less energy than the uninformed observer. An observer with perfect “classical” (as in classical physics) knowledge of the data could delete it with zero energy. But if observer and data shared quantum entanglement, the observer would have greater than complete knowledge and an entropy of less than zero. The result is that the deletion actually results in removing heat from the system. Of course, the quantum cooling theory is just that: a theory. It has yet to be tested, but conceptually it is entirely possible that quantum entanglement will help cool our supercomputers.