Guest Guest
| Subject: PREDICTED ‘INFORMATION CATASTROPHE’ MAY BE CAUSED BY FIFTH STATE OF MATTER Sun Sep 20, 2020 7:11 am | |
| PREDICTED ‘INFORMATION CATASTROPHE’ MAY BE CAUSED BY FIFTH STATE OF MATTER
September 20, 2020 by SkyWatch Editor
Elementary school teaches us that there are four types of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. But a new theoretical study says that the fifth form of matter has been lurking right under our noses and has the potential to cause a worldwide crisis if left unabated. This proposed fifth form is information. In a new study, researcher Melvin Vopson predicts that the weight of this information could equal that of half the Earth by the year 2245, creating what the study calls an “information catastrophe.” In the findings, published Tuesday in the journal AIP Advances, Vopson, a senior lecturer in physics at the University of Portsmouth, turns to a thermodynamics principle proposed by physicist Rolf Landauer in 1961 to explain the relationship between bits — the tiniest parts of information that make-up everything from how we send texts to how quantum computers are coded — and energy. In a nutshell, Landauer proposed that destroying a bit of information requires a comparable dissipation of energy. With this principle in mind… (READ MORE) |
|