Physics for Philosophers? Welcome back!
From the Age of
Enlightenment up to present day, Physics with the help of Mathematics has
changed and continues to profoundly change the World and the vision that Man
has of it. But in all this time, neither Philosophy nor the Philosophy of
Science has remained at a standstill, if we think of the birth of the STOQ disciplines
(Science, Theology and the Ontological Quest) in various universities including
some Pontifical ones; thanks also to the John Templeton Foundation as well as
the STOQ Foundation. Rather, it can be said that the contrast that arose
between Humanism and Scientism, if on one hand it created obstacles, on the
other it produced the need for a rapprochement between disciplines that were
once fused together or, if you prefer, jointly "con-fused". In this regard, it
is enough to remember Aristotelian Physics and Metaphysics up to the Theology (e.g.
Treatise on the Apocalypse) and the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica of
Isac Newton (defined by someone as "a theologian lent to Science").
"Physics
for Philosophers (ISBN 978-88-430-9962-7)" is also the (translated) title of a recent
book by Carlo Cosmelli for the course held at the Faculty of Philosophy of the
Sapienza University of Rome. A commendable attempt to locally recreate a bridge
between two disciplines which, starting from a precise same origin, have not
been able to avoid the separatist tensions of History to leave room for
specialist approaches. Ultimately "Physics for Philosophers" can be
considered an attempt to rediscover and grasp meaning not only in the
specialized approach to problems, but also and above all in the holistic
approach. Specialization or multidisciplinarity, science or humanism, can in
fact only be two different attitudes towards Knowledge, but they cannot
constitute a choice for Human Knowledge because it is oriented towards an
asymptotic limit: unique, intact and unattainable in any case. Knowledge has no
limits, has no age, has no boundaries and cannot be the subject of any form of
royalties. In this regard, precisely at a time when the debate on artificial
intelligence has opened between opportunities and concerns, the reflective
contribution offered by Melvin M. Vopson (School of Mathematics and Physics,
University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 3QL, United Kingdom) appears
commendable, in particular with his most recent work "The second law of
infodynamics and its implications for the simulated universe hypothesis" (Oct.2023).
A hypothesis that M.Vopson himself does
not hesitate to define as a philosophical theory, but full of
reflections and arguments, especially regarding symmetry. Below is a series of
works and the related abstracts, also due to the potential great relevance and
great interest that these research works seem to have in the context of a
Physics (II) course for Philosophers at
Sapienza University of Rome . The exchange of correspondence with Melvin
Vopson - also reported below. - clarifies the context that gave rise to this
post.
---------------------------------------Correspondence exchanged---------------------------------------
Dear Professor
Vopson,
You literally
made me tremble with the proposal of your conjectures potentially transformable
into real principles of physics, if proven experimentally. I also thought about
whether information processes somehow bind the parties involved together from
time to time, leading them to interact together and thus create stronger bonds
that require more bonding energy than would be needed without interaction. (As
for example quarks do in a proton or neutron through gluons). I even went so
far as to ask myself whether the mass - as Relativity teaches us - was not
missing some attribute to be truly representative of the equivalent energy
content and whether the Rienmann tensor (Ricci + Weyl) also took into account a
binding IT contribution, as well as a
magnetic contribution if the mass has a magnetic/electric field that interacts
and binds. I asked myself if it will ever be possible in the new physics to
have a formulation of Total Energy, with many different components, in the
manner of Bernoulli in hydraulics, in such a way that if in a process that
moves A to B it is clear which of the various components of the Total Energy
varies and how, leaving the Principle of Conservation of Energy intact. Maybe
we could discover that some bonds can produce energy by extracting it from the
unexpected (e.g. Zero-Point-Energy?).
Therefore, if I
had the financial possibilities of a great philanthropist and benefactor of
humanity, I would also finance your research to verify, through
matter-antimatter annihilation, your theory on "The
mass-energy-information equivalence principle", also to discover whether
all the information in the universe can be stored in a mass that can be
contained in a shopping bag and whether or not to do so we would have to consume
a good part of all the humanly available energy.
Thank you Prof.
Vopson for these works which I summarize below and which - with your permission
- I would like to put on my blog
together with this letter available to those who are interested in the topic.
Kind Regards
Rocco Morelli
1. THE MASS-ENERGY-INFORMATION EQUIVALENCE
PRINCIPLE
AIP Advances 9, 095206 (2019); doi: 10.1063/1.5123794 – by Melvin
M. Vopson - University of Portsmouth,
School of Mathematics and Physics, PO1 3QL Portsmouth, UK
ABSTRACT
Landauer’s principle formulated
in 1961 states that logical irreversibility implies physical irreversibility
and demonstrated that information is physical. Here we formulate a new
principle of mass-energy-information equivalence proposing that a bit of
information is not just physical, as already demonstrated, but it has a finite
and quantifiable mass while it stores information. In this framework, it is
shown that the mass of a bit of information at room temperature (300K) is 3.19
× 10-38 Kg. To test the hypothesis we propose here an experiment,
predicting that the mass of a data storage device would increase by a small
amount when is full of digital information relative to its mass in erased
state. For 1Tb device the estimated mass
change is 2.5 × 10-25 Kg.
2. THE INFORMATION CATASTROPHE
AIP Advances 10, 085014 (2020); doi: 10.1063/5.0019941 – by
Melvin M. Vopson - School of
Mathematics and Physics, University of Portsmouth, PO1 3QL Portsmouth, United
Kingdom
https://pubs.aip.org/aip/adv/article/10/8/085014/990263/The-information-catastrophe
ABSTRACT
Currently, we produce ∼1021
digital bits of information annually on Earth. Assuming a 20% annual growth
rate, we estimate that after ∼350
years from now, the number of bits produced will exceed the number of all atoms
on Earth, ∼1050.
After ∼300 years, the power required to
sustain this digital production will exceed 18.5 × 1015 W, i.e., the
total planetary power consumption today, and after ∼500 years
from now, the digital content will account for more than half Earth’s mass,
according to the mass-energy–information equivalence principle. Besides the
existing global challenges such as climate, environment, population, food,
health, energy, and security, our estimates point to another singular event for
our planet, called information catastrophe.
3. ESTIMATION OF THE INFORMATION CONTAINED
IN THE VISIBLE MATTER OF THE UNIVERSE
AIP Advances 11, 105317 (2021); doi: 10.1063/5.0064475 – by Melvin
M. Vopson- University of Portsmouth,
School of Mathematics and Physics, PO1 3QL Portsmouth, UK
ABSTRACT
The information capacity of the
universe has been a topic of great debate since the 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
×
1080 bits of information stored in all the matter particles of the observable
universe.
4.
EXPERIMENTAL
PROTOCOL FOR TESTING THE MASS–ENERGY–INFORMATION EQUIVALENCE PRINCIPLE
AIP Advances 12, 035311 (2022); doi: 10.1063/5.0087175 – by Melvin
M. Vopson - University of Portsmouth,
School of Mathematics and Physics, PO1 3QL Portsmouth, UK
ABSTRACT
The mass–energy–information
equivalence principle proposed in 2019 and the information content of the
observable matter in the universe estimated in 2021 represent two important
conjectures, called the information conjectures. Combining information theory
and physical principles of thermodynamics, these theoretical proposals made
specific predictions about the mass of information as well as the most probable
information content per elementary particle. Here, we propose an experimental
protocol that allows for empirical verification of the information conjectures
by confirming the predicted information content of elementary particles. The
experiment involves a matter–antimatter annihilation process. When an
electron–positron annihilates, in addition to the two 511 keV gamma photons
resulting from the conversion of their rest masses into energy, we predict that
two additional low energy photons should be detected, resulting from their
information content erasure. At room temperature, a positron–electron
annihilation should produce two ∼50 μm
wavelength infrared photons due to the information erasure. This experiment
could, therefore, confirm both information conjectures and the existence of
information as the fifth state of matter in the universe.
---------------------------------------Correspondence
exchanged--------------------------------------
Dear Rocco,
I hope you don't mind addressing you by
your first name, but if you do please accept my apologies. Also, please call me
Melvin.
Thank you very much for your email and for
sharing your interesting ideas about possible extrapolations and applications
of my research.
I can confirm that most of the things you
suggested are aligned with my own ideas, and this gives me the necessary
support and confidence in this work.
Please feel free to list on your blog
anything you wish.
As you said, these are "conjectures
potentially transformable into real principles of physics, if proven
experimentally."
However, I would like to share with you my
most recent work, which indeed translates into a new "law of physics"
and, unlike the mass-energy-information equivalence principle which requires
experimental validation, this new work is already validated.
Here is the link to the article (free to
download). I promise you, this one makes a really interesting reading.
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0173278
Once again, many thanks for reaching out.
Yours,
Melvin
Dr. Melvin M.
Vopson FHEA, FInstP, CPhys
Associate Professor of Physics and CEO of the Information Physics
Institute
School of
Mathematics & Physics
University of Portsmouth
Portsmouth PO1 3HF
United
Kingdom
5. THE SECOND LAW OF INFODYNAMICS AND ITS
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SIMULATED UNIVERSE HYPOTHESIS
AIP Advances 13, 105308 (2023); doi: 10.1063/5.0173278– by Melvin
M. Vopson - University of Portsmouth,
School of Mathematics and Physics, PO1 3QL Portsmouth, UK
https://pubs.aip.org/aip/adv/article/13/10/105308/2915332/The-second-law-of-infodynamics-and-its
ABSTRACT
The simulation hypothesis is a
philosophical theory, in which the entire universe and our objective reality
are just simulated constructs. Despite the lack of evidence, this idea is
gaining traction in scientific circles as well as in the entertainment
industry. Recent scientific devel[1]opments in the field of
information physics, such as the publication of the mass-energy-information
equivalence principle, appear to support this possibility. In particular, the
2022 discovery of the second law of information dynamics (infodynamics) facilitates
new and interesting research tools at the intersection between physics and
information. In this article, we re-examine the second law of infodynamics and
its applicability to digital information, genetic information, atomic physics,
mathematical symmetries, and cosmology, and we provide scientific evidence that
appears to underpin the simulated universe hypothesis.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. CONCLUSION
Let's hope that Carlo Cosmelli and Sapienza University of Rome, even on the basis of what has been indicated above, will be well disposed and inclined to activate a second course in Physics (II) for Philosophers which could contain these highly topical themes.
7. APPENDIX
Even if the blue dotted line will be the one along which human civilization could presumably move in the next two centuries, this still does not remain a reassuring prospect for future generations.
