Scientists Think the 5th State of Matter is Information
If true, then we need a whole new version of physics to explore it
Hiya!
Good Golly. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve taken more interest in science over the last few years, but it seems that the scientific community is on a hot streak. Busting old theories, proposing new ones, and turning everything we thought we knew on its head.
Just a few weeks ago, we learned there’s a definite possibility that the Big Bang wasn’t the beginning of everything. Around the same time, our concept of what Spacetime is was shattered. Now scientists are at it again. We were taught that solid, liquid, gas, and plasma are the only forms of matter in our universe. Well, according to recent hypotheses, information should be added to the list as the 5th form of matter.
Excuse Me, What Now?
I know. Initially, information being the 5th form of matter seems a bit wacky. Plenty of scientists agree with you and are also skeptical of the idea. How could information possibly exist as mass the way solid, liquid, gas, and plasma do? Though, after a closer look, it might not be as crazy as it seems.
The entire idea isn’t even new. See, for the concept to work, there must be a way to measure information. Which doesn’t seem so nuts when we consider electronics. Let me explain.
Back in the 1940s, mathematician and engineer Claude Elwood Shannon developed the Classical Information Theory — how to scientifically quantify, store, and communicate digital information. He’s since become known as the “grandfather of the digital age” because he was the first to prove that electrical systems could be designed using mathematics.
Afterward, Bell Labs hired him to figure out how to transmit information through wires. He was the first person to describe one unit of information as a “bit.” In this sense, information having mass isn’t so revolutionary. Your cell phone, computer, or even USB drives contain bits of information that we can measure.
Does Information Have Mass?
But things get weirder when we step outside of the digital plane. For information to be the 5th form of matter, it can’t just exist on a hard drive and in wires — It must also be physical. German-American physicist Rolf Landauer picked up the torch about two decades after Shannon.
In 1961, Landauer proposed that erasing just one bit of information has a thermodynamic cost resulting in what’s known as the Landauer Principle. He believed this would prove information exists as more than a mathematical quantity by linking information to energy. While theoretical at first, the Landauer Principle appears to hold up over the years, which means there’s a connection between information and thermodynamics.
Then, physicist Dr. Melvin Vopson at the University of Portsmouth realized this connection means information is physical. He then took things a step further by suggesting information is a fundamental unit within the universe — that it has mass and is energy.
He believes all elementary particles — the smallest building blocks of our universe — contain information about themselves. Kinda like how DNA stores information about us humans and all other living things.
In his 2019 paper, Dr. Vopson introduces a new hypothesis he calls the mass-energy-information equivalence. In it, he suggests that not only does information have mass, it’s also an essential unit in the universe. As in the fundamental building block in the universe. In the paper, he says,
“I am the first to propose the mechanism and the physics by which information acquires mass, as well as to formulate this powerful principle and to propose a possible experiment to test it.”
Prove It
Now, in March of 2022, Dr. Vopson published another paper that lays out a way he believes can test the idea once and for all to determine whether information has mass.
His proposed experiment would create a particle-antiparticle collision, resulting in the ability to detect and measure information inside an elementary particle. He told Phys.Org:
"The information in an electron is 22 million times smaller than the mass of it, but we can measure the information content by erasing it. We know that when you collide a particle of matter with a particle of antimatter, they annihilate each other. And the information from the particle has to go somewhere when it's annihilated."
When an electron particle and antiparticle collide, the impact turns any of the particle’s remaining mass into energy — as gamma photons. But in Dr. Vopson’s hypotheses, the information within the particles is instead converted into low-energy infrared photons.
Surprisingly, his ideas don’t conflict with any current laws of physics regarding quantum or classical mechanics, electrodynamics, or thermodynamics. If anything, they complement them.
Now we just need to actually test it. The problem is, it’ll require a lot of money and equipment. So, unfortunately, time will tell if information really is the 5th form of matter.
Perspective Shift
Most of us take what we learned in school, or the history books, as fact and forget that “facts” change as more information comes to light. We were all taught that gas, liquids, solids, and plasma constitute all matter in the universe. But considering how vast and unknowable the universe is, is it really so plausible that there are only four types of matter? In which case, having five forms doesn’t seem too outlandish. Maybe there are even more!
Even wilder, if Dr. Vopson’s theory about information is correct, it also explains the missing mass within galaxies which, in turn, explains or eliminates (or, I suppose, replaces) the idea of dark matter completely. In other words, Dr. Vopson thinks it’s possible that dark matter just might be information. Now that is earth-shattering.
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