Digital Data Could Be Altering Earth's Mass Just a Tiny Bit, Claims Physicist
According to calculations made a few years ago by University of Portsmouth physicist Melvin Vopson, the literal mass of visual imagery created daily – along with half a billion tweets, countless texts, billions of WhatsApp messages, and every other bit and byte of information we've created – could be making our planet a touch heavier. An experiment recently proposed by Vopson based on antimatter explosions might go some way in convincing the scientific community that information might not only have mass but that it could also be a strange new state of matter, or (of course) the elusive dark matter needed to balance most cosmological observations today.
Scientist says that dark matter may be information itself
"If we assume that information is physical and has mass, and that elementary particles have a DNA of information about themselves, how can we prove it?" Vopson asked in the release. "My latest paper is about putting these theories to the test so they can be taken seriously by the scientific community."
Vospon suggests an experiment that could test the hypothesis that information is a distinct state of matter — alongside solids, liquids, gases and plasmas — by using a particle-antiparticle collision to, in theory, "erase" information from the universe.
"It doesn't contradict quantum mechanics, electrodynamics, thermodynamics or classical mechanics," he said in the release. "All it does is complement physics with something new and incredibly exciting."
Reference:
Melvin M. Vopson, Experimental protocol for testing the mass–energy–information equivalence principle [open], AIP Adv., 12, 3, 2022.
DOI: 10.1063/5.0087175
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Had enough of trying to formulate the grand unification theory? Have a try at lumping another theory on the pile to see if that makes it better! Is Maxwell's Demon creating mass with every action?
(Score: 5, Informative) by martyb on Friday April 08 2022, @01:23AM (9 children)
Another piece of information... Please join me in welcoming our newest editor: hubie ( https://soylentnews.org/~hubie/ [soylentnews.org] )
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by optotronic on Friday April 08 2022, @01:32AM
Thanks, hubie! You're off to a good start!
(Score: 5, Funny) by hubie on Friday April 08 2022, @01:44AM (6 children)
Hey, who let this guy back in? :)
Thanks! Long time listener, first time editor.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @04:57AM (1 child)
How does hubie stand on the only case of banishment from SoylentNews? Aristarchus, hubie, yea or neigh? Will you vote to bring him back, and finally bring balance to the farce?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @06:06PM
Ari's mom is information.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Vocal Minority on Friday April 08 2022, @05:24AM
Thank you for volunteering to help keep the site running.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Friday April 08 2022, @05:54AM
Hah. Be careful to whom you listen to. ;) Thanks for the help round here.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday April 20 2022, @07:16PM (1 child)
And first post. Well... sort of. Your first editorial post.
As usual, I'm late to the party, but welcome to the team and thank you for volunteering.
(Score: 2) by hubie on Wednesday April 20 2022, @09:40PM
Thank you, very happy to help. Perhaps I'll see you on IRC sometime (if I ever remember how to get on and what commands to use).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @10:16AM
Well that's massive news
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Friday April 08 2022, @01:40AM (9 children)
40,000 metric tons every year [astronomy.com]
"Information" just rearranges it into neat little rows. It will take a big stack of hard drives in one place to make the earth wobble more than it does
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @02:12AM (7 children)
That information has mass-energy equivalence is not new. It has even been quantified, though not yet directly measured. What is new is the suggestion that it is an explanation for dark matter.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday April 08 2022, @03:13AM (2 children)
I'm not sure. It seems like things could be so arranged that the more information something stored the closer it would be to it's low energy state. Of course, preparing the substrate that you were going to write on would take a lot of energy, but once you built it, when you stored information it would lose energy, and therefore mass. Which would seem to imply that it isn't the information itself that carries the mass, but rather the energetic configurations of matter that store the information. (This clearly isn't the state when one is storing information in charged magnetic fields, but it's a lot less clear when one is storing information in the direction of polarization of a crystal (which I think may be what some CDs do).
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @03:50AM
Media with different energy states is an independent issue, just like storage using presence or absence of mass would neither prove nor disprove information having its own energy/mass equivalence. Even in that case if the number of 0's and 1's doesn't change we should still see a mass change if they are redistributed between ordered (low entropy) and disordered (high entropy) patterns. One experiment that I'd love to see is to compare the mass difference between the output of a CPRNG [wikipedia.org] and an HRNG [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @08:29AM
Given the energy-mass equivalence, if information works like atomic bonding and higher information configurations have lower mass as you suggest, then (assuming entropy is still monotonic) we should see a corresponding mass gain as low-information states permeate.
It does give an interesting definition of informational ground state - the point at which minimum information is present. This parallels quantum foam even, since a dynamic minimal information state will at times appear ordered.
It doesn't give infinite energy, because in a closed system entropy is bounded.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday April 08 2022, @02:11PM
Ah, yes, the ever elusive, explanation for "dark matter". This seems like someone coming up with a plug to put in the side of a leaky dyke (the original engineering term, not the slang).
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Friday April 08 2022, @10:51PM (2 children)
The concept of mass energy equivalence is even mentioned in the Bible!
Gospel of John. Starts off my saying:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
I am not here to preach a religion. I know these teachings have been spun every which a ways by every human involved in it. That is just human nature.
I feel I will find my God in studied of the sciences, including social sciences - ethics - how I should treat others. A sin against man or nature is to me a sin against God.
Now, I see some are considering that mass is a manifestation of information? The Word, as I comprehend it.
This still leaves me with the belief that God is Information, which is the Universe, which I still consider to be infinite
Now, as far as any reward I may get in the hereafter for sometimes being a doormat in my lifetime, I have "Pascal's Wager" to consider. I have found no concrete evidence one way or the other. I will do things, are not do things, as I am so guided. Otherwise I just feel like a piece of shit.
I have American Indian ancestry, and I know the spirituality of my family have biased my belief system. I also know that "being kind and considerate to the needs of others" ended up costing us our own land.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by captain normal on Saturday April 09 2022, @03:35AM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_5:5#:~:text=Augustine%3A%20Let%20the%20unyielding%20then,142%3A5.) [wikipedia.org]
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Saturday April 09 2022, @06:42AM
That is an interesting read for me.
But, as mentioned, there is a lot of interpretation as to the meanings and context of the words.
I guess for me, it mostly boils down to " do unto others as you would have others do unto you." kinda thing.
And if others just see me as weak because I shared, in the future, I try to avoid them, and no longer will i do as much as tell them the time of day.
My people knew this kind of spirituality as "walking the red road."
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday April 10 2022, @01:30AM
Is that where all the dust in my apartment comes from?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Friday April 08 2022, @01:58AM (13 children)
What's interesting about hidden variables that are used to introduce determinacy is that they are thus, strongly information-based. My take is that what we really are looking for here are entropic fields, which can be thought of as negative information, but better defined (and with some classic connections to familiar physical quantities, such as change in entropy times a temperature is a change in energy of the system).
In terms of this article, I would characterize these information/entropy fields as means to transport information to some event horizon (at least from the point of view) - a point of no return for the information. It could be the edge of the universe, an actual black hole event horizon, or merely some local irreversible physical process (something that generates entropy in the process). These fields would then unify our viewpoint of the universe as a hugely irreversible system with the fully reversible quantum model.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Friday April 08 2022, @05:53AM (6 children)
I have one question for the prof: if information has mass, can it travel at the speed of light?
Either way he answers yields what's superficially a contradiction with known science.
It seems he's regurgitating old work, this is from 2019: https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.5123794
Which from scanning the first couple of sections smacks of "loony" to me. Apparently bytes containing 00000000 and 11111111 are *both* "erased" (because handwaving), and the non-zero mass of every other byte value is measured relative to that state. Why did he chose the byte as an atomic unit of storing data? Why not the bit? Well, obviously - had he used the bit, then his ambiguous selection of what would have to be both 0 and 1 as being the "erased" state leaves no room for any other values for storing information with any non-zero negative mass.
It seems he's not a loon - his h index is decently high (over 20) - unless he's a loon in a big clique of loons that cross-cite.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @10:49AM
In this sense, yes. After all, photons carry information (both quantum and classical), are energy that could be converted to mass, and move at the speed of light. It's rest mass that cannot travel at the speed of light, which photons do not have.
While "information" as a thing with an independent existence is woven into quantum theory at a deep level, it's implausible that it has enough mass to account for dark matter. I think it's highly unlikely that it has any kind of mass-energy at all, but I can't actually disprove it.
Here's a simple argument that it's not dark matter. Dark matter has to be diffuse (evenly distributed) on the scale of solar systems, because its effect is not measurable in the orbits of the planets. But it has to be concentrated on the scale of galaxies, because it holds them together. This means that most dark matter is in interstellar space, but there is much less in intergalactic space, and that it is not particularly associated with dense concentrations of normal matter (like stars and planets).
But in his model, the things that produce information necessarily happen almost entirely in places with lots of normal matter. What's more, not all galaxies have the same amount of dark matter, but if dark matter is information, there should be some visible difference in the galaxies that would account for the difference in information production.
Basically this just doesn't explain anything and doesn't match dark matter even superficially. It's a crackpot theory.
It's possible to do good science and still believe a few silly things. (See Roger Penrose and consciousness).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday April 08 2022, @02:53PM (4 children)
I'm fairly certain that only local hidden variables have been (mostly?) ruled out - basically we've established that experimental QM results can't be explained by individual particles having properties we can't measure.
However, I haven't heard of anyone disproving non-local hidden variables - in fact I'm not even sure where you'd start with that, since a non-local hidden variable could be simultaneously available to every particle in the universe, and thus be able to explain almost anything.
Bohmian mechanics (and friends) all fall into the second groups, as the pilot wave would be a non-local phenomenon permeating the entire universe.
Can't say anything about this new claim except that I don't see any reason to assume information would be destroyed - you're annihilating matter, but the energy is conserved and I see no reason to assume that the original information would not be embedded in whatever new forms the energy takes. My understanding is that conservation of information doesn't necessarily mean that there's any realistic way to recover the original information, just that it can't vanish without having had an impact on other things.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday April 08 2022, @04:30PM
Damn, should have hit preview - only "local" should be bolded in that first sentence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @06:21PM (1 child)
Lost information is the definition of entropy., and the observable effect is heat, so you are correct that it can't be recovered.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday April 08 2022, @09:21PM
Not at all - entropy is a measure of the level of "disorganization" or "similarity" within a system, *not* the amount of information. The level of information remains constant regardless of entropy - every particle in the system has a specific position, velocity, orientation, etc., and nothing you can do will change that. In fact as I recall any loss of information would violate fundamental principles of QM.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday April 11 2022, @08:05PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Friday April 08 2022, @04:15PM (5 children)
Bohm theory and hidden variable theory are not at all synonymous. Bohm theory is a specific instance of a hidden variable theory.
The no-go theorems disallow certain types of hidden variable theories; in particular local hidden variables and non-contextual hidden variables. Bohm theory is a non-local, contextual hidden variable theory, therefore it is not affected by the no-go theorems.
The problem is that hidden variable models are only really attractive if they are local and non-contextual, but that is exactly what the no-go theorems say is not possible. Bohm himself abandoned his theory when he figured out that it is contextual. And non-local hidden variables are at odds with Lorentz invariance. And of course a lot of physicists don't like hidden variable theories altogether as the hidden variables are by definition unobservable.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday April 08 2022, @04:51PM (3 children)
How are the guiding waves in Bohmian mechanics any more inherently at odds with Lorentz invariance than, say, EM waves in the electromagnetic field?
I also seem to recall that "basic" QM is also at odds with S.Relativity, which is one of the big problems Quantum Field Theory was formulated to resolve. Meanwhile there has been an increasing amount of work in recent years at producing a Bohmianesque analog to QFT, and given the relative youth of Bohmian mechanics (in terms of theoretician-hours dedicated to the problem) it's hardly surprising it's far less complete.
As for physicists not liking hidden variables, I doubt the universe cares in the slightest what physicists like - so the only effect is the amount of effort applied to pursuing such theories.
Right now the only thing we know for sure about the interaction of QM and Relativity is that there must be a fundamental flaw in our understanding of one or both of them. In fact, I seem to recall some recent speculation that GR may be inherently non-quantum in nature, and the conflict between GR and QM may be the cause of quantum decoherence - you simply can't create a quantum superposition large enough to introduce gravitational uncertainty above a very low threshold.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Friday April 08 2022, @05:34PM (2 children)
Effects spread instantly in Bohmian mechanics, while they spread at most at the speed of light in the electromagnetic field.
It's not an issue of being less complete, it's an issue that a local hidden variable theory (which a version of Bohmian mechanics that is not at odds with Lorentz invariance would necessarily be) provably cannot ever reproduce quantum mechanics (this is one of the mentioned no-go theorems). That's a mathematical fact that you cannot get around. Indeed, you need not even assume quantum mechanics is true, all you need to assume is that Bell inequalities are violated. And the violation of Bell inequalities is something that can be experimentally tested, independent of which theory you use to describe the experiment.
Also note that if QM should turn out not to strictly hold, then the same would follow for Bohmian mechanics, as that reproduces (and is made specifically to reproduce) existing quantum mechanics.
Sure. But the universe also doesn't determine the popularity of (non-disproven) theories.
Quantum mechanics and special relativity (which is where Lorentz invariance comes in) go perfectly together. It's general relativity (i.e. gravitation) that makes problems.
But still, the basic fact remains that local hidden variable theories (whether they reproduce quantum mechanics or not) are not compatible with Bell inequality violations (an observable and observed fact). So unless there's still a loophole in the Bell tests, any hidden variable theory that wants to reproduce theobserved facts must be non-local (that is, at odds with Lorentz invariance).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday April 08 2022, @10:01PM
No argument that local hidden variables have been ruled out.
Right, gotcha... because different observers will disagree on whether events are simultaneous, and any detectable instantaneous signal propagation would therefore establish a preferred reference frame.
However, it seems to me that there are at least a few big loopholes that might remain open, e.g.:
- "detectable" would seem to be a key word - a "hidden variable" which cannot be detected or used to transmit information in any way will have no observable effect, and would thus not seem to generate any observable violations of Lorentz invariance.
in fact - wouldn't e.g. the instantaneous collapse of an entangled particle pair into opposing states be just as big a problem, regardless of the mechanism behind it?
- What exactly does "instant" mean? Different observers will disagree on the time interval between two events, but all will agree on the space-time interval between them. It seems like a wave which propagates through spacetime rather than just space could potentially sidestep the problem.
>But the universe also doesn't determine the popularity of (non-disproven) theories.
Perhaps not, assuming you exclude the scientists involved from your definition of "the universe", but popularity is not relevant to truth (under most models at least), only to the rate at which a non-disproven theory matures.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday April 08 2022, @10:21PM
Hmm... also, when trying to resolve fundamental discrepancies in our understanding of physics, it's probably a bad idea to assume any of the those understandings are in fact true, rather than just decent approximations that haven't yet been replaced with something more accurate.
E.g. Lorentz invariance doesn't necessarily imply that there's NOT a preferred reference frame to the universe, only that EM (and seemingly gravitational) phenomena can be understood without *requiring* such a preferred frame. We've had some hints that, e.g. time dilation effects nuclear forces as measured by decay rates, but I don't believe anyone has performed a QM analog to the Michelson-Morley experiment to determine if there's a preferred reference frame for those forces.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 08 2022, @06:52PM
So hard to get this past the weed stage of development.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Friday April 08 2022, @05:57AM (2 children)
The only two ways I can think that we are adding any mass to the "earth system" is from asteroids, meteorites and the like, along with a bunch of cosmic rays/photons.
If the energy is coming from those exact sources and we are writing 1's and 0's, then sure. We are adding mass.
But if we are burning coal, the mass of the "earth system" isn't going to change. What am I missing here?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @08:37AM
don't forget the EM and matter that Earth intercepts from Sol.
(Score: 2, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday April 08 2022, @04:57PM
Waste heat. Burning coal will ultimately decrease the weight of the Earth since part of the generated heat will ultimately leave the planet as radiation, carrying away energy and thus mass.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @11:53AM (8 children)
Then many Americans are very well informed.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @12:13PM (4 children)
This physicist may have his sums backwards?
Sure, the little bit of information in our computers has a mass equlivalent which might make a gain the planet's mass.
But the energy spent and randomness made to create and operate the computer also had a mass cost which far outweighed and gain.
On the other hand, his proclaimation is on the Internet, so it must be true.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday April 08 2022, @04:55PM (3 children)
Is there any reason to believe "randomness" has any less information content than any other arrangement of matter/energy? Seems to me that all 256 possible states of an 8-bit number should have exactly the same information content, regardless of whether they are the result of a careful calculation or "random" noise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @06:36PM
The paper appears to be talking about the energy to write a bit of storage to a specific value.
Perhaps it doesn't matter if the value was chosen randomly or is some defined information. Just that the hardware can remember the specific value chosen?
Note that the paper also says that this might be a problem sometime after there are more bits stored in computers than atoms in the earth. So the energy of keeping the bit value defined above the thermal noise background is small compared to other stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @07:02PM (1 child)
Other way around. A truly random sequence has higher entropy than a deterministic one, and thus should have a higher energy equivalence.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday April 09 2022, @01:24AM
>A truly random sequence has higher entropy than a deterministic one,
Yes (-ish. All zeros is just as truly random as every other possible sequence, but I get what you're trying to say. Talking about entropy, and randomness, are both hard.)
>and thus should have a higher energy equivalence.
So, a low entropy water tank divided into hot and cold halves, from which useful work can be easily extracted, has a lower energy equivalence than a high-entropy tank with the water all mixed together to a uniform temperature? What am I missing?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday April 08 2022, @04:26PM (2 children)
Would this mean that certain *cough* news outlets *cough* create negative mass?
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Friday April 08 2022, @07:40PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 11 2022, @02:45PM
Does that infringe on Apple's patented Reality Distortion Field?
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @04:35PM (1 child)
PBS space time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSKzgpt4HBU [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @09:38PM
So matter is just restricted (slow) light (energy)? Ok, now explain entangled photons and neutrinos.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday April 08 2022, @09:52PM
It must be true all the information I've received from reading this thread is making my head heavy.
This discussion also brings to mind the parable of the blind men and the elephant, except that the men are not only devoid of a primary sense, but also speak different languages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant#:~:text=The%20parable%20of%20the%20blind,is%20like%20by%20touching%20it. [wikipedia.org]
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 2) by donkeyhotay on Saturday April 09 2022, @02:58AM
Jen : [Moss has a small plastic box with a flashing light] What is it?
Moss : This, Jen, is the Internet.
.
.
.
Jen : Can I touch it? It's so light!
Moss : Of course it is, Jen. The Internet doesn't weigh anything.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday April 09 2022, @06:38PM
Has Dr. Schitzo actually weighed a bit? How much does a bit weigh? Does it depend on whether the bit is on a hard drive, floppy, tape, RAM? And does this only work with digital information? Analog information is easy to weigh, just put that book or vinyl record on a scale.
But, you know, everything that book, record, and hard drive were made of were already on the planet.
A description of a dream is information, what does a dream weigh?
I think someone hasn't been taking their meds.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday April 10 2022, @12:18AM
Information does require a minimum of energy to store it. And that minimum energy is determined by the ambient temperature.
But that doesn't mean that the information itself has mass.