Estimation of the information contained in the visible matter of the universe

Abstract

The information capacity of the universe has been a topic of great debate since 1970s, and continues to stimulate multiple branches of physics research. Here we used Shannon's information theory to estimate the amount of encoded information in all the visible matter in the universe. We achieved this by deriving a detailed formula estimating the total number of particles in the observable universe, known as the Eddington number, and by estimating the amount of information stored by each particle about itself. We determined that each particle in the observable universe contains 1.509 bits of information and there are 6 * 10 to power 80 bits of information stored in all the matter particles of the observable universe.

References in corpus (14)

• Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (in "The Review of Particle Properties" 2004)
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• Emergent Gravity and the Dark Universe
• Computational capacity of the universe
• High-precision test of Landauer's principle in a feedback trap
• A Map of the Universe
• Black holes and information theory
• Modelling the Pioneer anomaly as modified inertia
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• Information Equation of State
• The mass of a bit of information and the Brillouin's principle
• Does Information Have Mass?
• "Gravitational mass" of information?

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• The $\mu$-deformed Einstein field equations with $\mu$-dependent effective cosmological constant
• Combinatorial Potential of Random Equations with Mixture Models: Modeling and Simulation