Energy And Information In Water And Planetary Impacts

There have been a lot of investigations on this blog recently but science is what I really enjoy writing about.

A fundamental principle of my information theory, detailed in the compound posting on this blog "The Theory Of Complexity", August 2017, is that energy and information is really the same thing. We can see all around us how energy and information always end up being equivalent.

Let's look at two examples today, water and planetary impacts.

We can immediately see that energy and information is really the same thing because we cannot add information to anything without applying energy to it, and we cannot apply energy to anything without adding information to it.

Another way we can see that energy and information is really the same thing is in how we can make our lives physically easier, by using technology, but only at the expense of making them more complex. We can never, on a large scale, make our lives physically easier and also less complex.

ENERGY AND INFORMATION IN WATER

Distance in space is information. Since energy and information is really the same thing then distance must also be energy. This is why it requires energy to move an object from one place to another.

If distance is energy then the surface area of an object must also be energy. We know that the universe always seeks the lowest energy state. That is why the sphere is the default gravitational form of matter in the universe, such as for planets and stars. A sphere has the lowest surface area per volume of any three-dimensional geometric form. Since distance, and thus surface area, is energy, this makes the sphere the lowest energy state.

If we heat water, the heat is energy. The water will expand in volume, increasing it's surface area because surface area is equivalent to energy and information.

If the heated water is within colder water, the heated water will rise. This is because altitude is also energy, which shouldn't be surprising because altitude is distance. We can easily see how altitude is energy in that an object falls with greater force when it falls from a higher altitude. Also, if we give more orbital energy to a satellite then it will orbit at a higher altitude.

If we heat water to the boiling point it will expand in volume by a few percent. But more of the water will evaporate as it is heated. These water molecules in the air have the effect of greatly increasing the surface area of the water, because surface area is equivalent to energy.

Water evaporates from it's surface. But when the water reaches a certain temperature, related to the atmospheric pressure on the water, evaporation begins to take place throughout the volume of the water. This condition is known as boiling.

The bubbling within the water as it is boiling effectively increases the surface area of the water, because the heat that brings about boiling is energy and surface area is equivalent to energy. The surface of the water loses it's smoothness as the boiling point is approached and that also increases the surface area of the water.

The water molecules leaving the water because of the heat energy increases the surface area of the water, because surface area is equivalent to energy. But the molecules rise into the air, and altitude is also energy. This represents too much energy. But when water molecules condense together to form steam, this has the effect of decreasing the overall surface area of the water, bringing it back into line with the actual heat energy, even though the total surface area, including the steam droplets, is more than the surface area of the water before it was heated.

The formation of steam thus serves to maintain the equivalence of surface area and energy, because the altitude of the water molecules that left by evaporation is energy too.

Wind contains energy. Wind across water produces waves. The waves increase the surface area of the water to reflect the energy of the wind, because surface area represents energy.

Water evaporates because water is actually lighter than air by molecule, although it takes energy to break the hydrogen bonds in water. But upon reaching a certain altitude, with thinner and cooler air, water molecules condense together, upon a suitable condensation nuclei such as dust. When these droplets, which form clouds, condense together it means a loss of surface area.

Since surface area is energy, this must mean a loss of energy. But energy cannot just be lost, it shows up in the altitude energy of the now- much heavier than air large water droplets, and then the energy of their impact on the ground when they fall as rain.

ENERGY AND INFORMATION IN PLANETARY IMPACTS

The reason that impacts are still going on in the Solar System is explained by my information theory.

The Solar System formed, maybe four and a half billion years ago, when a massive star that preceded the sun exploded as a supernova. Only the largest stars can explode as a supernova. Much of the matter fell back together by gravity to form the sun and planets. We know that the sun is such a second-generation star because it contains heavy elements that are beyond it's current stage in the fusion process.

Each planet has it's own orbit. The planets do not collide for the simple reason that, if they were going to collide they wouldn't have formed separately in the first place.

But while planets themselves do not collide, there is still plenty of consolidation going on in the Solar System by gravity.

For each object in orbit around the sun, such as a planet or asteroid, there is it's orbital energy and the information of it's position. To understand why impacts take place during the ongoing consolidation of the Solar System, we must understand that we cannot keep the same orbital energy when the information of position in the Solar System is reduced by consolidation.

The reason for that, of course, is that energy and information is really the same thing.

Orbital energy is based on distance from the sun. The higher the orbit the higher the energy. If a meteor or asteroid, from a higher orbit, collides with the earth, so that it becomes part of the earth, the difference in the energy of it's former higher orbit shows up as the energy of the impact.

Another way of looking at it is that if the meteor or asteroid joins the earth so that the two now share information of position, that means less total information. Since energy and information is really the same thing then it must also mean less energy. But neither energy nor information can just disappear, it must go somewhere. The energy of the impact of the meteor or asteroid with the earth is where the excess energy went. The change to the earth's surface by the asteroid impact is where the latent information went.

This is, of course, because energy and information is really the same thing.  Distance is information and we know that a higher orbit is a higher energy orbit. This means that orbital energy and information of position is really the same thing. My information theory explains why distance is information. A higher number is no more complex, holds no more information, than a lower number. The complexity of a number, it's information level, is the value of the denominator when the number is expressed as a fraction or ratio.

9 is no more complex than 4 because 9 is really 9 / 1 and 4 is really 4 / 1.

But a ratio like 1 / 5 means that there are five possibilities and there must be information as to why one or more are included but the others are not.

Thus there is a complexity level of 5.

Distance is thus information because there are more possibilities of where something of a given size could be located within the distance, and the information of the entire distance would be necessary to specify where that location was.

A heavier impact by the meteor or asteroid on earth would involve more energy, but that means more information because energy and information is really the same thing. The greater information of the impact lies in the greater number of atoms and molecules that were displaced over a greater distance from their original positions.

This can only mean that energy and information is the same thing.