Yes, it does. You need to add energy to the system to align the magnetic particles. The added potential energy is manifest as added mass, just as when you heat an object. You are forcing the magnetic media from a less ordered state, to a more ordered state. The 2nd law demands that you do work on the system to accomplish this. The energy needed can be measured. Just measure the voltage drop [volts], and the current [amps], across the coil for the recording head. This gives you the power in watts, thus the energy per unit length [say per meter] of the recording tape. Then you factor in a coupling coefficient [k], accounting for the efficiency of the energy transfer. This tells you how much energy you put into the tape to store the information. By E = MC^2, the added mass per meter of tape is M = E / C^2 E = k x Volts x Amps [per meter of tape] In practice you have complex wave forms that require integrals and make the math a bit more complicated. But at any instant [very very small interval of time], this is accurate.
If we have measurements of 10 volts, and 0.100 amps, and assuming a coupling coefficient of 0.2, we get a value of 0.2 Joules of energy added per meter of tape. This results in about 2 x 10^ -15 grams. or two-millionths of a billionth of a gram.
Let's say the modification to the tape is to reverse the order of the bits on the tape. Do you think the tape now weighs more?
I left out that I don't know how the tape is supposed to know whether it should weigh more. The algorithm used could be adding order as measured by some metric, or it could be leaving the tape in less order, or the order could be essentially the same, as in reversing the tape. How does the tape know? Also, different metrics might not agree on whether order was added.
If you repeatedly write the tape (or computer disk storage device), the tape (or disk) continues to get heavier and heavier?
@HereWeGoAgain @WillReadmore What's It Have To Do With Star Trek Science? And what about data crystals
Entropy, or the degree of disorder, it not a subjective value. But that was a general principle. I went beyond that to show a direct calculation of the energy applied to the tape. The tape doesn't "know" anything. It requires energy to align the particles on the tape.
It has to do with information and transporters. Do you want to talk about real science or just fiction? If you just want fiction then it shouldn't be in the science section.
I agree that energy went into reorganizing the bits on the tape/disk. Look at the energy going into server farms! But, I'm not so sure that means that the modified object weighs more. That is, server farms aren't getting heavier as they are filled with meaningful data. When energy was used to reverse the order of the bits on the tape, did it weigh more? If the tape were flipped end for it, it would look the same (the point of the example). Would a blank tape weigh more if sequential digits were written on it? Would a tape of Newton's work weigh more if Einstein's work were written over it? Proposing that there is such a powerful objective measure of order that the tape would actually weigh more because of that order being improved seems to require substantial argument that I don't see here. My bet is that heat, not heavier tape is where energy went.
That is beyond debate. If you add energy to a system, you increase its mass. That comes straight from Relativity. In this case, the energy is stored in the magnetic fields of the particles. Put more simply, there is no such a thing as a free lunch.
The magnetic fields of the particles don't change other than their orientation. No orientation of a particle holds more energy than other orientations. So, energy is required to change the orientation, but the energy of the particle itself isn't changed by that. One orientation isn't any more "powerful" than the other. I think your argument had to do with information and the idea that there is an objective measure of how chaotic the tape is before and after a writing episode. You haven't suggested what that objective measure might be. Again, there IS another place for electrical energy to go besides becoming mass - heat. We pour electrical energy into server farms, and without elaborate remedies, they will melt down from the heat energy. You're proposing that some of that energy goes into increasing the mass of the media, but that argument has to be more than just suggesting that the energy must have gone somewhere - there are other places for it to go. This is why I was suggesting that there needed to be a better definition of the system. Conservation laws don't work without having seriously good definitions of the system.
The "transporter". It does NOT assemble with information and atomic particles at the destination. It does assemble with information and atomic particles transmitted as energy to the destination. Sometimes, "they" transport something into the void of space. How could it assemble if it required local particles to scavenge and assemble. Lord bless the Heisenberg Compensater.
There is no increase in mass on the tape because there is no conversion of energy into mass as there would be in a nuclear reaction. There is no net change in the overall amount of energy in the system because the tape is only one part of the overall system. Energy expanded in modifying the tape information is taken from outside the tape itself.
OK here we go Phasers. See link below to NASA proposal for a combined (neutral) particle and laser beam for use in space propulsion, which of course could equally be applied to weapons technology if you could make it work. No hand held versions I'm afraid though. And what else would you name a combined particle and laser beam? https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2018_Phase_I_Phase_II/PROCSIMA
