Have you ever wondered how bad your estimator hard drive would have to be to hive away all the entropy in the creation ? Well , a physicist has provided an interesting ballpark pattern . Every mote in the visible Universe would bestow up to 6x1080bits of information . That ’s a 6 follow by 80 zeros . For comparison . One TB is 8,000,000,000,000 bits ( that ’s just 12 zeros ) .
The first issue was approximate using the Eddington number , which is the phone number of protons in the seeable universe . apparently , the seeable matter is not just made up of protons , so Vopson expand on that . The second number , the information contained in each atom , is estimated using Claude Shannon ’s Information theory . In this work , each elementary speck correspond to 1.509 bit of information .
“ The info capacity of the universe has been a topic of debate for over half a century , ” Dr Vopson , from the University of Portsmouth , say in astatement . “ There have been various attempts to estimate the information capacity of the population , but in this composition , I describe a unequalled coming that additionally postulates how much information could be compressed into a single elementary particle . ”
Aprevious estimateby Seth Lloyd from almost two decades ago had a value much over a billion times higher but also , it included a very different derivation and interpretation of the information out there . And even previous workplace by Vopson had different estimates using dissimilar presumptuousness .
Different methods to answer this interrogative might conduce to a better discernment of info as a whole . It is very difficult to delimit what info is , despite it popping up in physics equations and being a crucial player in objects at the limit of physical science like blackened holes .
“ It is the first sentence this approach has been taken in measuring the entropy substance of the universe of discourse , and it provides a clean-cut numerical prediction , ” explain Vopson . “ Even if not entirely accurate , the numerical prediction offer a potential avenue toward observational testing . ”
Vopson ’s current computing intentionally discount the small quantities of antimatter present in the Universe , and neutrino – extremely light and non - electrically charged particles – that are highly abundant in the existence . It also ignores gloomy matter , a mystifying heart that might preponderate even matter 5 - to-1 .
