The Information of Position

The information on the structure of the matter in the universe can be divided into three parts. This has been added to the information theory on this blog, "The Theory Of Complexity".

The first is what we refer to as the Mass-Energy Equivalence. This is the well-known fact that a given amount of mass is equal to an equivalent amount of energy. Some of the mass is converted into energy in a nuclear reaction but the only way to release all of the energy, so that matter disintegrates back into empty space, is to react it with an equal amount of antimatter, so that both disappear in a fantastic burst of energy.

Again, energy and information is really the same thing because we cannot apply energy to anything without also adding information to it and we cannot add information to anything without applying energy to it. Another way we see that matter and energy is really the same thing is in how we can make our lives physically easier through use of technology, but only at the expense of making them more complex. We can never, on the whole, make our lives physically easier and also less complex.

My cosmology theory explains how the Mass-Energy Equivalence is also information. Empty space consists of alternating negative and positive electric charges in a multi-dimensional checkerboard pattern. This is thus a zero-information state, with no information at all. If we rearrange this pattern in any way, which would have to be a concentration of like charges, we are adding information. This is what my theory has matter as, any concentration of like charges held together by energy, which is the energy of the Mass-Energy Equivalence.

This is the same thing as a computer drive holding information in bits, except that the bits are referred to as being in either a state of 1 or 0, instead of the negative and positive electric charges of which everything in the universe is composed. If we react matter and antimatter together, the arrangements of like electric charges goes back to the perfectly alternating charges of empty space and the information that was held by the arrangement is released as energy, because energy and information is really the same thing. This is why a matter-antimatter reaction would release so much energy.

The second part of the information on the structure of matter in the universe is the energy that is released as radiation. When mass, according to the Mass-Energy equivalence, is converted back to energy, that energy will be released into space by way of electromagnetic radiation. Radiation, like matter, is information but the information, which is held by disrupting the perfect pattern of alternating electric charges in empty space, is spread over a wider area than with matter.

But the third part of the information on the structure of matter in the universe is what we could call the Information Of Position, and that is what our posting today is about.

Let's briefly review the complexity of numbers. A higher number is not necessarily more complex than a lower one. My definition is that the complexity of a number is the value of the denominator when the number is expressed as a ratio or fraction. A number by itself, such as 5, is really 5 / 1. 16 / 1 is no more complex than 5 / 1 because the denominators of both are equal.

A number by itself means essentially nothing. There is meaning only when it is expressed as a ratio with another number or definition such as 5 / eggs.

The information for where everything in the universe is positioned, one star relative to another for example, must come from somewhere. There is a lot of information of position in the universe because the general pattern is very irregular sizing and spacing of objects, although they are made of the same atoms and every atom is theoretically identical to every equivalent atom, meaning that every iron atom is identical to every other iron atom of the same isotope.

The source of the information of position in the universe is the original atoms in the universe, immediately following the Big Bang. In fact, that is the only place that it could have come from. The information for where everything in the universe is positioned, relative to everything else, must somehow be encoded into these first atoms.

The first atoms were a vast number of hydrogen atoms, hydrogen being the lightest and simplest atom. The number of hydrogen atoms is believed to be about a 1 followed by 80 zeroes. This number is far too vast for the human mind to grasp. Let's refer to the number of original hydrogen atoms as H.

As high as this number was, there was not a lot of information in it because the number was really H / 1. Remember that the complexity of a number, the information in it, is the value of the denominator when the number is expressed as a ratio or fraction.

If there had been only these original hydrogen atoms, and they were evenly spaced, there would not be much information in the universe at all. There was no information from anywhere else to make the atoms anything other than evenly spaced so, as these atoms were crunched together by gravity in the stars that formed as the atoms were pulled together, there could only be a universe of everything being identical and evenly spaced, whether stars, solar systems or, galaxies, because there would be no information to make it otherwise.

But now suppose that among all of these original hydrogen atoms, there had been just one single helium atom. Helium is the next heaviest element, after hydrogen. This helium atom would have been barely detectable but, in terms of information, it would have changed everything.

Since one atom is helium, we would now have the information of 1 / H, instead of H / 1, because one atom out of all the hydrogen atoms are of a different atom. It would involve so much information because it would have to be explained why only one atom, and why only this one atom in particular, is helium when all of the others are hydrogen. It would be a manifestation of the pattern that I refer to as "The One And The Many", where the helium atom is the one and all of the hydrogen atoms are the many.

Because all of the other hydrogen atoms are identical, and repetition is not adding complexity, it would go from the very low information state of H / 1, with a complexity level of 1, to it's reciprocal of 1 / H, where the complexity level is H which is the number of the vast amount of hydrogen atoms in the universe. It would be the information of why this one atom, out of all the others, was helium when the others weren't.

What actually happened in the universe was similar in principle. We know that actually about 25 % of the atoms in the universe were helium because atoms formed within minutes of the Big Bang and there was enough energy left over to fuse hydrogen atoms into some heavier ones in what is referred to as primordial nucleo-synthesis. But this is still not much information because it only gives us the ratio of 1 / 4, a complexity level of 4. Clearly the positioning in the universe is much more complex than that.

The universe also had traces of other atoms. There was a small amount, relatively speaking, of deuterium. This is an isotope of hydrogen that has one neutron, where ordinary hydrogen has no neutron. There was also a lighter isotope of helium, with only one neutron instead of the usual two, known as helium-3, but in very small amounts. There was also traces of the next heaviest element, lithium.

It is these trace elements from the Big Bang which formed the reciprocals of the vast numbers of hydrogen and helium atoms to provide all of the information of position in the universe. Without these trace elements being among the first atoms formed, before stars formed much later and crunched lighter elements into heavier ones, the structures of matter in the universe would have to be very simple.

There were four times as many hydrogen as helium atoms, so there could only be manifestations of a complexity of four. There could be four types of identical star, and four possible distances between them, which would be a very simple universe.

But what happened is that the trace elements that formed by Big Bang nucleo-synthesis, the deuterium (hydrogen with a neutron), Helium-3 (helium with only one neutron instead of the usual two) and beryllium, formed reciprocals with the vast numbers of atoms of ordinary hydrogen and helium, and this is where the information came from to create the very complex universe that we see today.