Physicists claim information is the 5th state of matter, by 2245, half of Earth’s...

Physicists claim information is the fifth state of matter. By 2245, half of Earth’s mass could be converted to digital bits

Tibi Puiu

Dark matter and information, are they the same?

But how could something as intangible as information have mass? The new paper argues that such a thing is indeed possible and could manifest itself through gravitational interactions. In fact, the elusive dark matter that every theoretical physicist who’s worth his salt is now searching for may just be information.

“For over 60 years we have been trying unsuccessfully to detect, isolate or understand what is the mysterious dark matter in the universe. Its presence is widely accepted in order to explain the dynamics and stability of cluster of galaxies and the galaxy rotation curves. Unfortunately, all efforts to isolate or detect dark matter have failed so far. In fact, it is well accepted that the matter distribution in the universe is 5% ordinary baryonic matter, 27% dark matter and 68% dark energy. This is equivalent to saying that about 5% of the visible universe is known and 95% of it we don’t have a clue what it is made of, i.e. dark matter and dark energy. If mass-energy-information equivalence principle is correct and information has indeed mass, a digital informational universe would contain a lot of it, and perhaps the missing dark matter could be just information,” Vopson said.

Physicists claim information is the fifth state of matter. By 2245, half of Earth’s mass could be converted to digital bits

Tibi Puiu

First, I want to say I have no privileged view of information science concepts and am just a fan.  The article's focus does engage core ideas that are pressing questions in modern thought about the subjct.  In general, I see the context as physicalistic, whereas the reality  of information (which at this point in time cannot be denied) is simply categorized by its correlative effects in terms of energy.  Hence, the claim that there is no separate level of generative activity.

 According to Vopson, physicists have always expanded their awareness of what makes up the universe. As scientists refined their sensing instruments and theories, they learned that the universe isn’t just made of baryonic matter (particles), but also radiation, dark matter and energy, and space-time. Information, although seemingly more abstract, could naturally join them because it is such an integral part of “both non-organic matter and life”.  

The article's conclusion, that management of information stored in physical media will be an unsolvable problem and will consume our physical spaces, is just foolish.  Why would we save all old data?  Won't storage tech improve -- because better retrieval software can compress data virtually.

More than that, the false conclusion comes from not facing the pragmatic facts.  Information, as abstract bits, generates information objects, when interacting with real-world meanings in the informational environment.  These immaterial entities interact with energy, actively, when organic minds change real-world probabilities with intent using the leverage they provide.  The common bond between energy and abstract information is structure - structure such as a plan to act.  The information object of an active organic plan is a combination of physical material's abstactable (immaterial) patterns and active probability waves carrying information about both the past and future structures.  

So, while all physically stored information has connection to materials, that in no way describes the activity of information structuring such as the bonding of relations involved with a planned intention.  Further, information about potential future states is likewise not physically manifest.  Information about future states is not just "in people's minds", it is objective in its probability to be observed, stored and processed into plans.