Landauer's principle

Landauer's principle states that whenever information is erased or lost in a computing process, a minimum amount of heat energy must be dissipated into the environment. In simple terms, deleting data isn’t free; it requires energy and results in a tiny amount of heat release. This concept links the abstract idea of information to physical energy and thermodynamics, highlighting that the physical process of erasing information has unavoidable energetic costs, which become particularly important as devices shrink and calculations become more efficient.