Fifth case of matter? Dark matter component could be information

Particle information could be the fifth state of matter, according to a suggestion presented in a new study. The author further suggests that information can be the “brick” of the mystery dark matter Universe!

What is the information?

Everything we know is made up of particles that have mass, such as electrons, protons and neutrons. It can take four forms – solid, liquid, gaseous, and plasma. The latter occurs when electrons and protons are stripped from the atoms that make up the gas, for example.

Scientists have known for some time that even if the state of a particular substance changes, such as water, the particles retain information. According to the laws of physics, the information contained in a particle cannot simply disappear, no matter what happens.

Another “rule” that cannot be violated is that particles of matter can be “spoiled”, but never rearranged to a previous state. Technically speaking, in any closed system (where nothing goes in and nothing goes out), the entropy will not automatically decrease. A book paper never becomes part of a tree again, and warm water does not separate into hot and cold parts, and so on.

These changes in the state of matter are described as “increased entropy”. In closed systems, the entropy never decreases, although it may remain the same. This also means that information is never lost. Nothing comes out, nothing goes in. But remember that the information we are referring to is a set of quantum properties of the particles that make up the system.

Thus, they are not binary words or symbols like those in computers, but a whole bunch of things we need to know to reconstruct the original matter. For example, in a paper analogy, we can analyze the particles in a book to verify that they actually came from a tree.

In practice, the information of a substance consists of the data necessary to determine its exact state. Until now, the information from the photon, for example, has been used by scientists to learn more about the system from which the particle arose, and some physicists have tried Calculate the amount of information in the entire universe.

Information as a state of matter

Perhaps not many would have expected that information could have mass in itself, not to mention that it would be one of the most elemental states of matter. But experience can change physics as we know it.

The physicist Dr. Melvin Fobson published previous research suggesting that information has mass and that all elementary particles store information about themselves, similar to the way humans possess DNA. Now, he proposed an experiment to test the hypothesis.

In their new article published in Advance AIPThrough collisions between particles and antiparticles, scientists can detect and measure elementary particle information. “The information in an electron is 22 million times smaller than its mass, but we can measure the information content by erasing it.”

When an electron and a positron (the antiparticle of the electron) collide, they both annihilate each other – but not without their mass turning into other particles and energy; After all, nothing in the universe can disappear. It turns out that the electron and positron information has to go somewhere.

In the particle-antiparticle collision process, the mass is essentially converted into gamma photons. But Dr. Vopson also predicts that the process will also convert information from the colliding particles into low-energy infrared (IR) photons. The two photons are expected to have wavelengths of about 50 μm (depending on the sample temperature).

He also claims that other conversion mechanisms are possible, such as gamma photons “which become carriers of excess information energy”. Thus, he says, “Even if the information guesses are correct, the experiment thus proposed is not entirely guaranteed to succeed.”

Finally, Dr. Vopson says the information could be the dark matter that makes up roughly a third of the universe. If the experiment is conducted and produces the expected results, “this will be an eureka moment because it will change physics as we know it and expand our understanding of the universe” without conflicting with current laws of physics.

source: University of Portsmouth