THE HIDDEN COST OF KNOWING TIME IN THE QUANTUM WORLD Quantum clocks were supposed to be ultra-efficient. But researchers just found out the real energy hog isn’t the clock - it’s you trying to read it. In a new study, scientists built a quantum clock powered by single electrons hopping between two nano-sized zones. Each hop = one tick. Simple, right? But when they measured those hops using high-tech sensors, they burned up to a billion times more energy than the clock used to tick. Let that sink in: observing time at the quantum level costs way more energy than keeping time. The moment you try to turn those quantum ticks into classical data? Boom - entropy skyrockets. This shatters the old belief that measurement is cheap in quantum physics. Turns out, just watching the clock is what makes time irreversible - giving it a forward direction. So if you’re dreaming of ultra-efficient quantum tech, don’t just build better clocks. Fix how we look at them. Source: Physical Review Letters