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Topic: Black Holes and The Internet - page 2. (Read 3006 times)

sr. member
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November 03, 2012, 03:42:30 PM
#46
Next, when something falls into a black hole, its information is preserved.
What exactly makes you draw this conclusion? I think it is rather the opposite. Information is destroyed inside the black hole actually it is the only place where destruction can happen.
Stephen Hawking sez so?:
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Eventually, however, the pile will be so dense that it will collapse into a black hole, and the surface area of the black hole will be directly proportional to the amount of information in the pile.
You are assuming two things. 1) you definitely need mass to store information 2) there is a limit to how much information could be stored in a given amount of mass
1) you do  2) there is.
1) What else will you store it with? Please be specific.
2) The upper limit, presumably, would be encoding a bit of usable information in each of the quantum properties of, e.g., an atom or subatomic particle (so: spin, polarisation, color, etc).

I was not suggesting gravity decreases because information goes up. I was only stating the fact that less mass is need to store the same amount of information and hence there is a drop in gravity per. I was trying to illustrate the point that the opposite process happen in a black holes - a black hole minimizes the amount of information to increase gravity (also conversion).
The amount of information in 1kg of silicon SDRAM wafer is almost precisely the same irrespective of whether is contains Shakespeare's sonnets, or just uninitialized random junk straight from the factory. This is because each bit (for us) is made up of millions of quantum bits of information about the state of the atoms composing that single macro-bit. So, in the analogy of the coin-toss, think of each silicon nano-bit reading off either heads or tails, randomly. The infomation in the silicon is *far* greater than the additional info obtained from Shakespeare's sonnets. I mean orders of magnitude greater.
A black hole does not minimize or information, and it doesn't 'create' or 'increase' or 'store' gravity. If you want to talk about black holes, there is only one valid framework in which to do so - General Relativity. (scientists are trying to apply quantum mech. to BHs too, but not yet successful). The gravity, therefore, does not originate in the black hole, but is a 'symptom' of the bending of space-time due to the mass contained within the black hole. Incidentally, mass is one of the three defining characteristics of a black hole: mass, spin and charge. Once you know those, you know all there is to know about a black hole - just like the Pressure and Temperature of an ideal gas. You still won't know anything about the speed of individual molecules, or about the single bits of information leaked by black hole evaporation, but as far as knowing how the black hole, or ideal gas, behaves, there is nothing more to know.

Just like a black hole I guess, which merely stores gravity? According to the article information is converted into gravity. I was using term internet as a black-box term for supermind something capable to produce information. This discussion for example is the product of the internet (our minds or what have you). So yes, internet produces information.
Have you read any of Shannon's theories? Information is 'turned into' gravity by virtue of the fact that the information is carried by massive particles which contribute to the black hole's mass and so alter the nearby gravitational field.
Let me ask you something: does a digital camera create or merely capture information? The internet, even considering it as somehow a 'hive' mind (the whole is greater than the sum of the parts etc) isn't creating anything. "It" is merely processing and memorizing information "it" finds interesting.
hero member
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November 03, 2012, 03:30:17 PM
#45

The universe contains infinite amount of info. Otherwise infinite loops would be impossible and you could not make a fact out of a fact.


Infinite loops require infinite time because of the limit of the speed of light of information.

So here you only need the idea of infinite information if you are sure the universe will exist forever.
hero member
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November 03, 2012, 03:26:33 PM
#44
There is a major fallacy within this whole argument.

The Universe is information itself. When you store information somewhere, you haven't created new information. Instead, all you've done is change the information which already existed, plus change the existing information within your brain to interpret it as being meaningful to you.

No new quantity of information is created.

Information is a concept, the universe is made of objects.

Objects are concepts.
The universe is made of possibilities.
Information describes the relation between different expressions of possibility.
hero member
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November 03, 2012, 03:24:20 PM
#43
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You don't need something that has mass to store information. You can store information in photons or something subatomic for example.
Most subatomic particles have mass. Photons can be used for transmitting information, not storing it. You cannot have a bottle with light. (well I have few bottles of light beer still unopened but this is not the case, they contain a loss of information if I pass out) You still need some structure that have mass to support the storage and retrieval of information.
So we get no information whatsoever out of the photons that travel to us from distant stars, right?
A lightwave traveling from a star to us is only 'transfering' infromation, but does not contain (store) it?

I think you need a wider definition of information Smiley

Information is that which differentiates one state from another.
So actually any system can store or transduce information.
The fact that a photon has a certain frequency is information.
Saying that it doesn't store information is ridiculous. It's very expression in this universe is defined by information!

The problem is of course that we have mass and most of our consumption of information needs to be in the form of massive particles.
Light is just not very practical as a storage medium.

In any case, transmitting information requires the system to at least temporarily store the information.

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I do not buy the argument that we are going reach a limit. Transistors will go away something based on something else might come up or the way we handle information.
Yes we probably do. In year 2070 Intel and Samsung will start to make SSD chips that store multiple bits per quark. If it is possible, lol. But there is some fundamental laws of physics that prevent anyone to accumulate infinite amount of information and some scientists are perfectly clear about this.
But we do not need infinite amounts of information stored in one place.
The limits you talk about are pretty extreme.
The event horizon of a black hole, for instance, can be seen as a 2D surface that contains all the information of the matter inside the black hole. But that infinetly thin layer of information on the event horizon is all there is to know about the mass (and/or energy) inside it.
If you can describe so much matter (and its energy, the same type as in a atomic bomb) by such a thin layer of two dimensional information then there is hope for storing our tiny human datasets in a small pice of matter.


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Like for example quantum computer deal with way more information.
Quantum computers are not here and none knows when they will be available on newegg.com
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If you destroy any kind of information a particle is created usually graviton.
Do gravitons exist? It is some time I have not updated my knowledge on quantum physics but I'm certain that this is not true at all.
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So while small amount of information is destroyed in black holes some amount of information is created else where (the internet).
The black holes can destroy the information if they like. I don't care. For example tiny part of mass of nuclear material in atomic bomb is converted to pure energy when the nuke explodes. This does not mean that part of that "destroyed" mass miraculously shows up in someones arsehole. The black holes in far reaches of galaxy really are not connected to the internet!

But in a nuclear explosion there is no information destroyed whatsoever, it is merely converted.
If you would look at the end product (mostly energy) you could trace back how the information looked before the conversion (it looked like matter).
The whole point about this black hole stuff is that the information that goes in is not the same that comes out. So by looking at the information that comes out you have no idea what caused it.
It's like the information is put into a gigantic box of random information on one end and at the other end a random set of information appears.
It's like the best random generator in the universe! Put in ordered stuff and you get maximum disorder.

sr. member
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November 03, 2012, 02:28:12 PM
#42
It doesn't matter what you find appealing. Objects are no concept they exist.
Information is a property of an object, interpreted by our brains. The notion that objects consist of information is ludicrous, a typical fallacy perpetrated by those who follow esoteric teachings.
It might suit their purposes but in a scientific sense it is just plain wrong.
It doesn't matter what I find appealing? To whom doesn't it matter? (It matters to me.) And when you say that it doesn't "matter" are you suggesting that my beliefs regarding the nature of reality are "immaterial"?  Wink (Because if so, I'd tend to agree.) Why doesn't it matter? Is it because there is an objective reality that exists separate and apart from my experience of the same? If so, how can I know that for sure given that all of my knowledge of that reality is necessarily filtered through my experience?

Are you suggesting that mind arises from matter? What's your response to those who argue the opposite, i.e. that matter arises from mind?  Have you seen this video? https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-primacy-of-consciousness-peter-russell-119344 What's your response to the argument it presents?

What "esoteric teachings" are you referring to specifically? (I'd be very interested in learning more about them.  Smiley)

Can we know that our universe is not a computer simulation?  If so, how can we know that? If we can't know that, and our universe were a simulation, would you still say that the notion that objects consist of information is ludicrous?

When you say that I'm wrong "in a scientific sense," what do you mean? Are there any senses in which I'm right?
hero member
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November 03, 2012, 02:20:52 PM
#41
Just to add:
The way information is destroyed in a black hole, as far as I understand it now, is.

Something enters a black hole and all the quantum information is converted into gravity.
So the following example is not applicable...

An egg on the table has structure and pattern. Assuming all eggs are exactly alike, I can convey the structure of it to you with the term 'egg'. A broken egg on the floor cannot be conveyed as precisely. I might have to use words like this: "There is a fragment of a shell 1/4" in size over here, a splattering of yoke over there, and so on."
Each broken egg is different.

Particles as unique entities disappear. What was an electron/proton or what have you becomes gravity. So you can't go back and do "take that electron and put it back into this place". That electron is out of existence. So if you have a group of electrons that encode some information undergo a similar process. Where does the information go? (other than emerge on the internet by some mysterious process Tongue)

Also, thank you all for solid ideas!
hero member
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... it only gets better...
November 03, 2012, 01:29:32 PM
#40
Next, when something falls into a black hole, its information is preserved.
What exactly makes you draw this conclusion? I think it is rather the opposite. Information is destroyed inside the black hole actually it is the only place where destruction can happen.

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Eventually, however, the pile will be so dense that it will collapse into a black hole, and the surface area of the black hole will be directly proportional to the amount of information in the pile.
You are assuming two things. 1) you definitely need mass to store information 2) there is a limit to how much information could be stored in a given amount of mass

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Now, after that tangent, OP is confusing correlation for causation. Just 'cos transistors are getting smaller and using less mass, therefore decreasing the gravity due to a single bit of human-stored information, doesn't indicate that the lesser gravity is due to information itself somehow requiring less 'gravity', but due to humans requiring less 'gravity' in order to encode information.  Think, once upon a time you needed a 10kg stone to write 100 bytes or so (think Moses).

I was not suggesting gravity decreases because information goes up. I was only stating the fact that less mass is need to store the same amount of information and hence there is a drop in gravity per. I was trying to illustrate the point that the opposite process happen in a black holes - a black hole minimizes the amount of information to increase gravity (also conversion).

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The 'internet' is not creating information. It is merely storing information (very inefficiently, at that) that is already available, if only we could somehow understand it.
Just like a black hole I guess, which merely stores gravity? According to the article information is converted into gravity. I was using term internet as a black-box term for supermind something capable to produce information. This discussion for example is the product of the internet (our minds or what have you). So yes, internet produces information.
legendary
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November 03, 2012, 01:24:26 PM
#39
The best compression algorithms will produce a stream of data that is indistinguishable form white noise. That means it cannot be compressed any further, because white noise is not compressible. The size of your file, after perfect compression, is a good indicator of how much information lies within.

Except there is no best compression algorithm. It depends on the nature of the data and the understanding of it. If I take all prime numbers within a certain magnitude and add up the corresponding oscillations with respect to the wavelength until I used up all the bandwidth the resulting signal will be indistinguishable from white noise. Still the knowledge how the signal was created makes it possible to reproduce it with just the algorithm.

Information Entropy in respect to computer science is pseudoscience, any mathematician would be laughed at if he were to represent such a non-rigorous concept.

Whatever your domain is, there is indeed a best compression algorithm. If the Universe is deterministic, then I suspect the best compression algorithm starts with the seed of its beginnings.

The Big Bang theory has nothing to do with determinism. On the contrary, it actually reverses it by making assumptions about the past.
hero member
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November 03, 2012, 01:17:24 PM
#38
From the Wikipedia entry:

Read it very carefully (emphasis is mine).

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Entropy, in an information sense, is a measure of unpredictability. For example, consider the entropy of a coin toss. When a coin is fair, that is, the probability of heads is the same as the probability of tails, the entropy of a coin toss is as high as it could be. There is no way to predict what will come next based on knowledge of previous coin tosses, so each toss is completely unpredictable. A series of coin tosses with a fair coin has one bit of entropy, since there are two possible states, each of which is independent of the others. A string of coin tosses with a coin with two heads and no tails has zero entropy, since the coin will always come up heads, and the result can always be predicted. Most collections of data in the real world lie somewhere in between. It is important to realize the difference between the entropy of a set of possible outcomes, and the entropy of a particular outcome. A single toss of a fair coin has an entropy of one bit, but a particular result (e.g. "heads") has zero entropy, since it is entirely "predictable".

Zero entropy is not encoding more information.
This wikipedia entry is a bit misleading. If the coin toss is truly random, then irrespective of whether it's fair or not, then there is still no way to predict the next toss based on previous tosses - each toss is still completely unpredictable. I don't know enough to say how many bits of entropy there are in a weighted coin toss; according to the definition quoted above, it would still be one bit, since there are always two possible outcomes, even if (e.g.) the coin is weighted 99% in favor of heads. But that seems a little strange since the string of bits from a 99% weighted coin would be much more compressible than a fair 50% coin.

AFAIRemember, a best compression algorithm *does* exist. However, it is either impossible, or is NP-hard, to prove that any algorithm is actually the best possible one (can't remember which).  This relates to Turing's work, and also Godel. A better expert than me is surely visiting these forums.

There is a difference between a weighted coin and a two headed coin though, which the Wikipedia article uses as an example.

Regarding coins in general, and infinite flips, I believe the important thing to note (and you alluded to it in your prior post about how informational content only changes, but still contains information) is the fact that one picture may be more compressible than another, but its capacity for information storage does not change. A 500 x 500 pixel image, whether an even blue sky, or a detailed still life, still has the same capacity for information storage. I think it's important to distinguish between capacity and content.
sr. member
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November 03, 2012, 01:09:40 PM
#37
From the Wikipedia entry:

Read it very carefully (emphasis is mine).

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Entropy, in an information sense, is a measure of unpredictability. For example, consider the entropy of a coin toss. When a coin is fair, that is, the probability of heads is the same as the probability of tails, the entropy of a coin toss is as high as it could be. There is no way to predict what will come next based on knowledge of previous coin tosses, so each toss is completely unpredictable. A series of coin tosses with a fair coin has one bit of entropy, since there are two possible states, each of which is independent of the others. A string of coin tosses with a coin with two heads and no tails has zero entropy, since the coin will always come up heads, and the result can always be predicted. Most collections of data in the real world lie somewhere in between. It is important to realize the difference between the entropy of a set of possible outcomes, and the entropy of a particular outcome. A single toss of a fair coin has an entropy of one bit, but a particular result (e.g. "heads") has zero entropy, since it is entirely "predictable".

Zero entropy is not encoding more information.
This wikipedia entry is a bit misleading. If the coin toss is truly random, then irrespective of whether it's fair or not, then there is still no way to predict the next toss based on previous tosses - each toss is still completely unpredictable. I don't know enough to say how many bits of entropy there are in a weighted coin toss; according to the definition quoted above, it would still be one bit, since there are always two possible outcomes, even if (e.g.) the coin is weighted 99% in favor of heads. But that seems a little strange since the string of bits from a 99% weighted coin would be much more compressible than a fair 50% coin.

AFAIRemember, a best compression algorithm *does* exist. However, it is either impossible, or is NP-hard, to prove that any algorithm is actually the best possible one (can't remember which).  This relates to Turing's work, and also Godel. A better expert than me is surely visiting these forums.
hero member
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November 03, 2012, 01:00:47 PM
#36
The best compression algorithms will produce a stream of data that is indistinguishable form white noise. That means it cannot be compressed any further, because white noise is not compressible. The size of your file, after perfect compression, is a good indicator of how much information lies within.

Except there is no best compression algorithm. It depends on the nature of the data and the understanding of it. If I take all prime numbers within a certain magnitude and add up the corresponding oscillations with respect to the wavelength until I used up all the bandwidth the resulting signal will be indistinguishable from white noise. Still the knowledge how the signal was created makes it possible to reproduce it with just the algorithm.

Information Entropy in respect to computer science is pseudoscience, any mathematician would be laughed at if he were to represent such a non-rigorous concept.

Whatever your domain is, there is indeed a best compression algorithm. If the Universe is deterministic, then I suspect the best compression algorithm starts with the seed of its beginnings.
sr. member
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November 03, 2012, 12:58:46 PM
#35
4) There is not such law as of "information conservation" Information can be easely destroyed. Kick a jigsaw for example, or crash a harddisk by dropping it on the floor for that matter.
AFAIK information cannot be destroyed. You can change its form, you can scatter it so it looks nonsensical to us, but the information is still there. In the case of dropping a harddisk, you can hardly say that the magnetic bits have vanished.

Next, when something falls into a black hole, its information is preserved. Assuming you knew PRECISELY everything that had ever fallen into the black hole, and you were willing to wait a VERY long time to observe ALL information that the black hole gives out as it evaporates, then you could THEORETICALLY reconstruct the object you lost to the black hole.

Shannon's theorems prove that information is equivalent to entropy. The entropy of the universe is continuously increasing, therefore so it the information contained in the universe. In the "heat death" scenario of the universe, in the far far faaaar future (let's say, far enough away that bitcoin keys might be cracked [anyone wanna do the calculation to see which will happen first?]), the entire universe is a uniform cloud of individual, randomly placed, particles. Since a random signal contains maximal information, the entropy of the universe will at that point be maximal.

OP should look at the "Holographic Principal". To put it briefly, imagine a pile of computer memory chips. You can imagine adding more and more chips to the pile, increasing their density, and so forever increasing the density of information in the pile. Eventually, however, the pile will be so dense that it will collapse into a black hole, and the surface area of the black hole will be directly proportional to the amount of information in the pile. In a certain sense, all the information about everything that ever fell into the black hole is "written" on the surface.  Now instead of a black hole, and consider the whole universe, and the inescapable conclusion is that we, and all our 3D universe, is actually a hologram, being equivalent to, and derivable from, information and laws governing the interaction of those quanta of information, all written somewhere, very far away, on the 2D surface enclosing the (observable) universe. Fascinating, eh? New Scientist had a great article describing it a few years ago, but it's paywalled.

Now, after that tangent, OP is confusing correlation for causation. Just 'cos transistors are getting smaller and using less mass, therefore decreasing the gravity due to a single bit of human-stored information, doesn't indicate that the lesser gravity is due to information itself somehow requiring less 'gravity', but due to humans requiring less 'gravity' in order to encode information.  Think, once upon a time you needed a 10kg stone to write 100 bytes or so (think Moses).

Finally, the amount of quantum information in the memory chip of your computer is far far far more than the bytes of memory it contains. OP should read more of Shannon's theories of informational entropy. That's the theory you're looking for. The 'internet' is not creating information. It is merely storing information (very inefficiently, at that) that is already available, if only we could somehow understand it.

Whoops! 9 new posts since I started.
legendary
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November 03, 2012, 12:53:14 PM
#34
The best compression algorithms will produce a stream of data that is indistinguishable form white noise. That means it cannot be compressed any further, because white noise is not compressible. The size of your file, after perfect compression, is a good indicator of how much information lies within.

Except there is no best compression algorithm. It depends on the nature of the data and the understanding of it. If I take all prime numbers within a certain magnitude and add up the corresponding oscillations with respect to the wavelength until I used up all the bandwidth the resulting signal will be indistinguishable from white noise. Still the knowledge how the signal was created makes it possible to reproduce it with just the algorithm.

Information Entropy in respect to computer science is pseudoscience, any mathematician would be laughed at if he were to represent such a non-rigorous concept.
hero member
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November 03, 2012, 12:42:49 PM
#33
The best compression algorithms will produce a stream of data that is indistinguishable form white noise. That means it cannot be compressed any further, because white noise is not compressible. The size of your file, after perfect compression, is a good indicator of how much information lies within.

An egg on the table has structure and pattern. Assuming all eggs are exactly alike, I can convey the structure of it to you with the term 'egg'. A broken egg on the floor cannot be conveyed as precisely. I might have to use words like this: "There is a fragment of a shell 1/4" in size over here, a splattering of yoke over there, and so on."

Each broken egg is different.
hero member
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November 03, 2012, 12:35:09 PM
#32
From the Wikipedia entry:

Read it very carefully (emphasis is mine).

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Entropy, in an information sense, is a measure of unpredictability. For example, consider the entropy of a coin toss. When a coin is fair, that is, the probability of heads is the same as the probability of tails, the entropy of a coin toss is as high as it could be. There is no way to predict what will come next based on knowledge of previous coin tosses, so each toss is completely unpredictable. A series of coin tosses with a fair coin has one bit of entropy, since there are two possible states, each of which is independent of the others. A string of coin tosses with a coin with two heads and no tails has zero entropy, since the coin will always come up heads, and the result can always be predicted. Most collections of data in the real world lie somewhere in between. It is important to realize the difference between the entropy of a set of possible outcomes, and the entropy of a particular outcome. A single toss of a fair coin has an entropy of one bit, but a particular result (e.g. "heads") has zero entropy, since it is entirely "predictable".

Zero entropy is not encoding more information.
legendary
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November 03, 2012, 12:24:33 PM
#31
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I think people still use term entropy just like they did in the 19 century.
Did someone tried to read that Wikipedia article and the additional links? At least partial understanding can give additional sense to this discussion.
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November 03, 2012, 12:15:52 PM
#30
I think people still use term entropy just like they did in the 19 century. They did not think about it in terms of information.

I would be disinclined to claim that the inverse of entropy is information.
I agree with this. The more entropy there is the more information.
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November 03, 2012, 11:30:59 AM
#29
Fair coins produce greater entropy in their sequence of tosses. Unfair coins produce less entropy. Imagine a coin so unfair, all it produces is heads. That's zero entropy. It takes more bits to encode a sequence of fair coin tosses.

A fair coin will produce an image of white noise. A picture of a perfectly blue sky will only be one color, the opposite of white noise. Thus white noise has greater entropy. A picture of a single color has next to no entropy.

Which has more information? A picture of pure white noise? A picture of a pure clear blue sky where all pixels are one color? A picture of an interior with many diverse objects?

I would be disinclined to claim that the inverse of entropy is information.
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legendary
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November 03, 2012, 11:02:03 AM
#27
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I know quantuum physicists have exotic models which exchange things from an Universe to another one, but I stay in a thermodynamic POV here
We still have no "theory of everything" and for now our best bet is to apply laws that are applicable to the system we are talking about. Your car runs on Newtonian laws of physics and it is hard to describe your car's engine using quantum mechanics.
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Information is a way to order things, entropy is the destruction of that order.
The disorder still contains information of both current disorder and the previous order. I don't know how this relate but I think that quantity of information and entropy is not strictly proportional.
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black holes decrease entropy (also information) and convert it to a simple particle of gravity (graviton, Higgs, what have you). I think it is an established thing that the more stuff goes in the more pull a black hole has.
Black holes have no additional gravity than the mass of black hole itself. The gravity of our Sun and the gravity of black hole with the same mass as Sun will be equal.
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