Abstract
Landauer’s principle is applied to information in the universe. Once stars began forming there was a constant information energy density as the increasing proportion of matter at high stellar temperatures exactly compensated for the expanding universe. The information equation of state was close to the dark energy value, w = -1, for a wide range of redshifts, 10 > z > 0.8, over one half of cosmic time. A reasonable universe information bit content of only 1087 bits is sufficient for information energy to account for all dark energy. A time varying equation of state with a direct link between dark energy and matter, and linked to star formation in particular, is clearly relevant to the cosmic coincidence problem. In answering the ‘Why now?’ question we wonder ‘What next?’ as we expect the information equation of state to tend towards w = 0 in the future.c
Highlights
Landauer showed that any erasure of information is necessarily accompanied by heat dissipation [1]
We have shown that the information equation of state was negative and equal to the dark energy value wDE ~ -1.0 during the rapid star formation period 10>z>0.8, or for over one half of cosmic time
By considering a simple model for the equation of state of information in the universe we have shown that information energy must make a significant contribution to dark energy
Summary
Landauer showed that any erasure of information is necessarily accompanied by heat dissipation [1]. When a bit in the memory of a computer is forced to a standard state, usually by being reset to zero, irrespective of its present value, which may not be known, the information bearing degrees of freedom and the entropy of the computer memory are clearly reduced. Shannon information entropy of a computer memory device, log2NL, is just the number of bits needed to distinguish between the NL information bearing degrees of freedom used for computer logic states [10]. Information entropy is equivalent to thermodynamic entropy when the same degrees of freedom are considered. The information entropy of the physical world is the number of bits needed to account for all possible microscopic states. Each bit of information is equivalent to ΔS = kB ln of thermodynamic entropy leading to Landauer’s principle that ΔS T = kB T ln of heat is dissipated when a computer logic bit is erased. This strong interdependence between nature and information is emphasized by astrophysicist John Wheeler’s slogan "it from bit" and computer scientist Rolf Landauer’s maxim “information is physical”
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