The Number Of Stars In The Universe

Here is something to think about. There are a certain number of stars in the universe. Although we do not know the exact number that number is information, and information must come from somewhere. Why are there as many stars in the universe as there are?

My theory of "The Lowest Information Point", December 2017, offers an answer. Although we cannot tell the actual number of stars, we can see where the number comes from.

The theory is based on the idea that energy and information is really the same thing. 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.

We know that the universe always seeks the lowest energy state. An object will fall to the ground because that requires less energy than holding it in the air. Matter collecting by gravity in space will form a sphere because a sphere is the three- dimensional geometric form with the lowest energy.

So then if the universe always seeks the lowest energy state, and energy and information is really the same thing, then the universe should also seek the "Lowest Information State", hence the name of the theory.

The lowest information state would mean reusing numbers. It would also mean preferring a square over a rectangle, a square requiring less information because it's two dimensions are equal. This can mean a square in pattern, and not necessarily an actual geometric square.

Another example of the Lowest Information Point is related ratios.

Suppose that we have two sets of related ratios as follows,

A / B = B / C and

A/ B = C/ D

The universe should prefer the first set of related ratios. It contains only three pieces of information whereas the second set contains four. The first set only contains three pieces of information because the numerator of one ratio, B, is also the denominator of the other ratio. Such reuse of numbers makes it possible for the universe to reach the lowest information point.

There is a section of "The Lowest Information Point", December 2017, titled 1) THE BIAS TOWARD DUST. According to my cosmology theory, "The Theory Of Stationary Space", everything in the universe, both space and matter, is composed of nearly-infinitesimal electric charges. Planck's Length is a nearly-infinitesimal distance that shows up in all manner of physics formulas, and the reason is that it is the size of one of these electric charges.

Then we have an idea of the scale of the entire universe.

The reason that so much of the matter in the universe is in the form of dust, at least the heavier elements that have been through the fusion process in stars, that there is a "bias toward dust", is explained by "The Lowest Information Point". It is that the typical scale of a speck of dust is exactly halfway between the nearly-infinite scale of the entire universe and the nearly-infinitesimal scale of it's component electric charges.

Such reuse of information is how the universe achieves the "Lowest Information Point".

So we see this clear relationship between the entire universe, the electric charges composing it, and the dust that is the form of so much of it's heavier matter. But what else might we be able to discern from it? There is a finite number of stars in that universe, but whatever that number is it is information, and information must come from somewhere, and the universe always seeks the "Lowest Information Point".

Googling the number of stars in the universe gives us a figure of a billion trillion. This number would be written as a 1 followed by 21 zeros. There are higher estimates that I have seen but this is the generally accepted figure, not counting red and brown dwarfs as stars.

Students of chemistry may notice how close this is, relatively speaking, to Avogadro's Number, which is 6.02 followed by 23 zeros. In fact, our figure for the approximate number of stars is just about a six hundredth of Avogadro's Number.

Avogadro's Number is the number of atoms or molecules in an object, relative to it's mass in grams.

The atomic mass of iron is 56, meaning that there are 56 nucleons, protons and neutrons, in an atom of iron.

So, if we get a piece of iron with a mass of 56 grams, it will contain Avogadro's Number of atoms.

The atomic mass, sometimes called the atomic weight, of an element is always the total number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus. Electrons have an equal, but opposite, electric charge to the proton but have so little mass that they don't count. We can also use molecular mass, meaning the total number of nucleons in a molecule.

A gram is about the mass of a paper clip. Avogadro's Number is an arbitrary unit based on a gram. If the gram was different then Avogadro's Number would be different.

The dust of which so much of the matter in the universe is composed, because of "The Bias Toward Dust", consists of many different elements which have different masses. We know that the component elements of dust must be heavier than the two lightest elements, hydrogen and helium, which were the original atoms of the universe before fusion in stars. We also know that, as a rule, lighter elements tend to be more abundant than heavier elements.

Suppose that the average mass of an atom in the dust of the universe is that of oxygen, with an atomic mass of 16. Remember that we should expect a mote of dust in the universe as a whole to be heavier than one on earth because dust in the universe, mostly debris from exploding stars that hasn't yet condensed by gravity into new stars, will tend to contain much more metal than dust on earth.

If Avogadro's Number is six hundred times the number of stars in the universe, and we divide that by sixteen, that means that if the average bit of dust in the universe had a mass of about 2/75 gram, it would mean that there is about the same number of stars in the universe as there is atoms in a typical speck of dust toward which the matter of the universe is biased and of which so much of the heavier matter of the universe is composed.

This would make perfect sense and would be an ideal example of the principle of "The Lowest Information Point". There is a bias toward dust because the scale of a typical mote of dust is exactly halfway between the scale of the universe itself and the scale of the nearly-infinitesimal electric charges of which the universe is composed. Then there is about the same number of atoms in one of these specks of dust as there is stars in the universe.