If verified, the mass-energy-information equivalence principle will show that information is a physical, dominant, fifth state of matter, and digital bits will outnumber atoms on Earth — it’s just a matter of time.
AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS
WASHINGTON, August 11, 2020 — As we use resources, such as coal, oil, natural gas, copper, silicon and aluminum, to power massive computer farms and process digital information, our technological progress is redistributing Earth’s matter from physical atoms to digital information — the fifth state of matter, alongside liquid, solid, gas and plasma.
Eventually, we will reach a point of full saturation, a period in our evolution in which digital bits will outnumber atoms on Earth, a world “mostly computer simulated and dominated by digital bits and computer code,” according to an article published in AIP Advances, by AIP Publishing.
It is just a matter of time.
“We are literally changing the planet bit by bit, and it is an invisible crisis,” author Melvin Vopson said.
Vopson examines the factors driving this digital evolution. He said the impending limit on the number of bits, the energy to produce them, and the distribution of physical and digital mass will overwhelm the planet soon.
For example, using current data storage densities, the number of bits produced per year and the size of a bit compared to the size of an atom, at a rate of 50% annual growth, the number of bits would equal the number of atoms on Earth in approximately 150 years.
It would be approximately 130 years until the power needed to sustain digital information creation would equal all the power currently produced on planet Earth, and by 2245, half of Earth’s mass would be converted to digital information mass.
“The growth of digital information seems truly unstoppable,” Vopson said. “According to IBM and other big data research sources, 90% of the world’s data today has been created in the last 10 years alone. In some ways, the current COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this process as more digital content is used and produced than ever before.”
Vopson draws on the mass-energy equivalence in Einstein’s theory of general relativity; the work of Rolf Landauer, who applied the laws of thermodynamics to information; and the work of Claude Shannon, the inventor of the digital bit.
In 2019, Vopson formulated a principle that postulates that information moves between states of mass and energy just like other matter.
“The mass-energy-information equivalence principle builds on these concepts and opens up a huge range of new physics, especially in cosmology,” he said. “When one brings information content into existing physical theories, it is almost like an extra dimension to everything in physics.”
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The article, “The information catastrophe,” is authored by Melvin M. Vopson. The article will appear in AIP Advances on Aug. 11, 2020 (DOI: 10.1063/5.0019941). After that date, it can be accessed at https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0019941.ABOUT THE JOURNAL
AIP Advances is an open access journal publishing in all areas of physical sciences–applied, theoretical, and experimental. The inclusive scope of AIP Advances makes it an essential outlet for scientists across the physical sciences. See https://aip.scitation.org/journal/adv.
He just discovered teleportation. The beam me up kind.
I’m sick to my back teeth of catastrophe at the moment Melvin, thanks anyway.
This reminds me of the guy from the Society for the Conservation of Gravity. He picketed and protested the construction of tall buildings. He figured elevators use up too much gravity.
To put this in perspective, there’s about 10^40 CO2 molecules in the atmosphere. The current amount of information on the planet is about 60 Zetabytes or about 10^24 bits. As of today, there are 10^16 atmospheric CO2 molecules per bit of stored information. We will run out of information long before we run out of atoms to store it.
There’s something very wrong with the calculation of the equivalent mass energy of information. What’s he doing, multiplying bits by c^2? Even that’s not enough.
How does something like this get past per review? I guess it’s the same way so many junk climate science papers get published.
Clearly, a lot of that coming information will be produced by people like the author of this piece. Possible fictions must be a high order of infinity.
What? You mean that CV-19 won’t kill us all first?
Vopson would have got an F in Quantum Mechanics and he is a crackpot.
In Quantum Mechanics you can not create nor destroy a quantum state, it is called the no hiding theorem. It was theoretically proved in 2007 and experimentally confirmed experimentally in 2011.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-hiding_theorem
So when encoding you are simply changing the quantum states of the media it doesn’t get heavier.
The actual weight of a storage media has already been done but for a different reason and you can detect thermal changes from the write process
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0805/0805.4175.pdf
Mass and energy are not equivalent. This is just Einstein’s fluff talk. Who takes it serious?
Phin
Thanks for adding levity to a heavy subject.
I see what you did there!
Your bait is stale.
Everyone but you obviously.
Why?
If well established scientific principles can be dismissed as “fluff talk”, what should we call the nonsensical and inconsistent ramblings and babbling of an uninformed crank?
You mean well-established fluff talk.
How is it a principle?
e=mc^2
If m and e are “equivalent” then you can just swap them out for each other …
e=ec^2
m=mc^2
m=ec^2
As you can see there is no science in Einstein’s fluff talk … it’s just mumbo jumbo, but too many men are cowards to admit it.
So many sheepish cowards …
So you flunked grade school algebra as well?
Obviously you are trolling.
It is literally impossible to be as stupid as you claim to be with this last comment.
Obviously
She is Maths and physics illiterate but feels qualified to explain how the world works 🙂
Greta, is it you?
Obviously you can’t think for yourself.
“Who takes it serious?”
Probably very few people who do not know what an adverb is.
Nicholas
Really? 🙂
Another example of what passes for modelling these days. Fortunately the author will have disappeared up his own orifice before he discovers that his projection is simply impossible, and is therefore wrong. Is he doing perpetual motion machines next week?
“Fortunately the author will have disappeared up his own orifice…”
His problem is obvious.
I’m not worried about the article.
I know that when I dream my mind is quantum entangled and transferred to a server farm near the centre of the galaxy.
There is plenty of server space there still available, we can just outsource as our information here on earth piles up. They won’t take tiktok data though, the sagitarons had to draw the line somewhere.
Regardless of the (im)plausibility of the physics behind the article, simple economics tells us that the cost of stored information will increase as it approaches anything like planet-gobbling size.
First, the above article sounds very much like a do-over the the Club of Rome’s “Limits to Growth” study and alarmist book. This study—as is the case with the above article and its claims—was fatally flawed by projecting that an early exponential curve will continue unchanged into the future. Just look at the figure given in the above article!
In reality, exponential curves representative of physical parameters ALWAYS end over time, generally transforming into S-shaped curves having an asymptotic limit, due to both negative feedback effects and the introduction of new, unconsidered factors (e.g., new technology, new drugs, new sources of necessary resources, etc.). Prime case in point: look at what happened to all exponential curves related to the “peak oil” meme.
Second, from the above article: “. . . the work of Claude Shannon, the inventor of the digital bit.” Incredibly dumb, and wrong!
The concept of the coexistence of a mathematical “0” and a mathematical “1” was held long before Claude Shannon was even conceived (b. April 30, 1916). So did the concept of physical, switchable devices having two states (e.g., a telegraph key, an electric light switch, a on-off fluid valve); reference “binary devices”. The telegraph (demonstrated practically for first time in May, 1884) used the basic concept of electrical “bits” for communication. Claude Shannon is correctly recognized as being “the father of information theory”, which is nothing like being “inventor of the digital bit”.
Lastly, at the bottom of the above article: The article, “The information catastrophe,” is authored by Melvin M. Vopson. The article will appear in AIP Advances on Aug. 11, 2020 (DOI: 10.1063/5.0019941). From this I can conclude (a) that Mr. Vopson has a lot to learn, and (b) that AIP Advances must not have any serious editorial review—let alone peer-review—of what it publishes.
Does Melvin Vopson realize that it takes numerous atoms to manufacture a memory gate capable of storing a bit?
How could bits of information outnumber the atoms which store that information?
Just as a concept, this seems to make as much sense as saying that there are more grains of sand on Earth than molecules.
My calculations on the growth of the population of cats indicate that there will soon be more cats on Earth that all of the atoms in the biosphere.
Is it April first already?
Oh dear… Since it takes more than one atom to store a bit of information thats really gonna stretch them server farms!
Of all the lunatic researches…
What is this? The modern equivalent of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
Some background:
Weight, i.e. weight of the Earth is based upon measuring gravity:
Vopson then goes on to compare “bit” informational storage as equivalent to atoms.
Utterly ignoring how many atoms of material are required to ‘store’ “bits” of information.
This is where it becomes evident that this armchair researcher is gobsmacked by the use of words like gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte, exabyte, etc.
This lack of information storage knowledge coupled with gross ignorance about atomic physics and comparative mass versus atoms estimates.
That is, a cylinder of platinum-iridium as measured on the surface in Sèvres, France determines Vopson’s basis for Earth’s estimate of atoms.
“hurl your scale out the window, and count how many seconds it takes to hit the sidewalk. Then measure the distance from your window to the ground, and you can compute the acceleration of the scale”
..
This is false.
..
You cannot compute acceleration with a measure of distance and time. You can compute velocity with distance and time, but you need distance and time squared to measure acceleration.
???? wow!!!
the assumptions being that acceleration is constant and Vz(t=0) is zero.
Someone needs to study some very basic mechanics.
“You cannot compute acceleration with a measure of distance and time. You can compute velocity with distance and time, but you need distance and time squared to measure acceleration.”
So, you have distance and you know time, but you are unable to determine time squared?
Is this a joke?
Besides, unless one is on a different planet, the acceleration due to gravity is known.
The part that is unknown is friction with/resistance from the air.
Lateral motion is irrelevant.
He also seems oblivious to friction with air, i.e. wind resistance.
My scale is made of feathers.
Does this mean we are doomed ?
How can we fight “an invisible crisis” ?
Can Gritter Thumpbug see “an invisible crisis” ?
We must rely on our glorious leaders to save us & lead us to the promised land (it will be expensive)
I have only one word for this. BULLSHI*.
This is just another fool extrapolating into absurdity to create another false crisis.
Reading all of or (I must be honest, some of) the above information (or misinformation, malinformation, fake information, useless information, irrelevant information, etc.), the thought that comes to my mind is, “How many angels can dance on the point of a needle?”
Yep, pin heads got lots of dance floor space compared to the other end.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not. 🙂
“We are literally changing the planet bit by bit, and it is an invisible crisis,” author Melvin Vopson said.
Maybe somebody can invent a delete key!
Not enough use of the Trash Can or Recycle Bin, obviously.
That’s nothin’, man. We have reliable information that the number of genders is infinitely more than the number of atoms in the known universe, and is still growing exponentially.
The gender-multiplication phenomenon has given rise to ground-breaking research funded by the Gates Foundation to develop a trans-galactic post-quantum supercomputer based on rapid gender-switching engines.
You don’t change the number of atoms when you store information.
You only relocate or change the properties.
They are NOT converted to mass. !
This seems to be a less coherent rehash of Stanislaw Lem’s “Professor A. Dońda” (1973).
I highly recommend that short story, by the way.