When it was first discovered that the universe had begun with a "Big Bang" and had been expanding outward from it ever since, a primal question soon arose. Was the universe "closed" or "open"?
What that is about is whether the matter of the universe will fall back together again by gravity. If we throw a ball upward, it will reach a certain height and then come back down. That means that the trajectory of the ball is "closed". If the outward momentum of the universe, from the energy of the explosion of the Big Bang, is greater than the inward pull of gravity, meaning that the matter will never fall back together again, that means that the universe is "open".
At first those who study the universe were divided, it seemed plausible that the universe would fall back together possibly to trigger another Big Bang and repeat the process, perhaps endlessly. The question was whether or not the expansion of the universe was slowing down, like a ball thrown up into the air. If it was slowing down the expansion would eventually reverse itself and the universe would be "closed".
But it was found that, not only is the outward expansion of the universe not slowing down, it is actually speeding up. That makes it certain that the universe is "open" and it's matter will not fall back together by it's mutual gravity.
One of the main points of my theory of how information works is that energy and information is really the same thing. I noticed that whether we see a process in terms of energy or in terms of information, the result always ends up the same. It is because we are made up of our bodies and our minds. If we deal with the universe in terms of our bodies, we see it as energy. If we deal with the universe in terms of our minds, we see it as information.
Another way of seeing that energy and information is really the same thing is that we cannot add information to anything without applying energy to it, and we cannot apply energy to it without adding information to it. Also we can make our lives physically easier through technology but only at the expense of making them more complex, which means involving more information. We can never, on a large scale, make our lives both physically easier and also less complex. This shows that energy and information is really the same thing.
But if energy and information is really the same thing, and we have shown in terms of energy why the universe is "open", that means that, if my theory that energy and information is really the same thing is correct, there must be a way to explain why the universe is "open" in terms of information.
Let me show how the following very simple algebraic statement shows that the universe must be "open". The statement is: x / x = 1. That means that any ratio or fraction where the same number is both the numerator and the denominator is equal to 1.
Energy and information is really the same thing. We know that the universe always seeks the lowest energy state. That is why an object released into the air falls to the ground. It involves less energy to support the object on the ground than to continue to support it in the air. It strikes the ground with an impact that has energy because that is the energy that originally suspended it in the air.
But if the universe always seeks the lowest energy state, and energy and information is really the same thing, that means that it must also seek the lowest information state. That is the point of my theory, "The Lowest Information Point", which was spun off from the three theories about cosmology and information that came before it.
If the universe sought "The Lowest Information Point" then, my reasoning went, there would be two things that it preferred. First, it would prefer what I call "related ratios" in which the denominator of one ratio was also the numerator of the other. In other words, preferring a / b = b / c over a / b = c / d. The reason is that the first contains only three points of information, while the second contains four. The first would thus be "The Lowest Information Point".
The second thing that the universe would prefer, and which is related to the first, is a square over a rectangle. Since both dimensions of a square are, by it's definition, equal, then that would represent a lower information point than a rectangle, whose two dimensions are not equal. Something defined as a square thus requires only one piece of information, while a rectangle requires two.
That is why so many ratios regarding the scales of the universe, from the subatomic to the galactic, are, as the theory shows, of the related ratio, "A is to B as B is to C". This is only three points of information, rather than four.
Consider that there are two components of the matter in the universe. 1) There is the number of different things in the universe. 2) There is the total number of all things in the universe. What "things" there are are based on the fact that most matter is made of atoms and there are a number of ways in which atoms can merge together with other atoms, and then combine to make different things.
These two components actually form the sides of a square. Well, actually it's a rectangle but it is trying to be a square because that is a lower information point than a rectangle, and remember that the universe always seeks "The Lowest Information Point".
When the universe was first formed by the Big Bang, there were only five different stable atoms that formed. Two isotopes of hydrogen, two of helium, and trace amounts of lithium. So there were countless numbers of individual atoms, but only five different kinds of atoms.
What that represented, in therms of "The Lowest Information Point", was an extremely, extremely elongated rectangle. One side of the rectangle was only five, the five different atoms, and the other side was the near-infinity of the total number of different atoms.
Ever since then, small atoms have been crunched together within stars to form many different larger atoms and all atoms have been combining together with each other to produce a wide variety of the different "things" that the universe is made of. There are now 92 naturally occurring elements, of which there are several hundred different nuclides, or isotopes. A nuclide is a stable combination of protons and neutrons.
All of these many different atoms combine with each other in near-countless ways by chemical and structural bonds, and by gravity, to form the wide array of "things" that the universe today is made of. But the total number of atoms is, of course, far reduced from what it was immediately after the Big Bang.
What all of this combining amounts to is the universe trying to turn the original rectangle into a square, because it would be "The Lowest Information Point". The total number of atoms have been far reduced, since the Big Bang, but the total number of different things, from the original five different stable atoms, has been far increased. The universe has come a long way in it's progress toward being a square, which it is seeking because that is the "Lowest Information Point".
If the concept of the "closed" universe was correct, the matter of the universe falling back together by gravity, that would fulfill the square because, with all of the matter together in what would be one massive black hole, there would only be one object and thus only one different type of object, which would be a perfect square.
Given the algebraic formula at the beginning, it would be simply 1 / 1 = 1.
If the nature of matter was that the original small atoms were unable to combine together into larger atoms, and then into other things from there, then there would have to be a "closed" universe and the matter would have to fall back together in order to close the inevitable square that is "The Lowest Information Point".
But what happened, in terms of energy, was that, as smaller atoms were crunched together in stars into larger atoms, some of the energy of position in space, which is also information, was transformed into electromagnetic radiation, which is why stars shine. Since electromagnetic radiation like this does not exert gravity on matter, there is not enough gravity to pull the matter of the universe back together.
In terms of information, since the nature of matter makes it possible for few different smaller atoms to be combined together into many different larger ones, and then for those to be combined into very many different "things", the universe is able to gradually pull the original very elongated rectangle toward being a square. Since the two sides of a square are equal that means that, no matter what the number of different things and total number of things ends up being, which means that everything will be different from everything else in the universe, they will equal 1 when expressed as a ratio.
This is because, once again, x / x = 1. Thus the universe can be "open", it does not have to be "closed" to get to the square.
WHY THE EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE HAS TO BE SPEEDING UP, IN TERMS OF INFORMATION
To use a familiar example from computer technology, suppose that we have six bits and twelve empty spaces. Each bit can fill one of the empty spaces, but the bits are identical and indistinguishable from one another. This gives us 4,096 possible permutations of bits in empty spaces. Each empty space would be either full or empty but, since the bits are identical and indistinguishable from one another, it would not make a difference which bit was in which space.
Now suppose that we consolidate our six bits together so that they are distinguishable from one another. One bit we will leave as it is, and call it "One-Bit". We will combine two bits together and call it "Two-Bit". We will combine the other three together and call it "Three-Bit". Although we have fewer bits than before to put in the twelve empty space, three bits instead of six, the bits are now distinguishable from one another, and this adds information.
But even so, our consolidation of the bits would mean a net loss of information. Having the three distinguishable bits to go in the twelve empty spaces would give us 3,960 possible permutations, in contrast with the 4,096 with six separate but indistinguishable bits.
What this is a model of, of course, is matter in empty space. The bits are atoms and the empty spaces are space. The original six identical bits represent the original hydrogen atoms in the universe. The consolidated bits represent the heavier atoms that come from the nucleo-synthesis that takes place by fusion in stars.
There is one solution. In our simple example of bits in empty spaces, one way that we can maintain the same level of information is to increase the number of empty spaces as we consolidate bits together. The same number of bits in more empty spaces represents more information because it gives us more possible permutations, and that is how information is represented.
We may not be able to see it locally, but the universe must be expanding to accommodate the increasingly manifested information of what was but is no more and of what could have been but isn't.
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