Does information have mass?

Jaafa

Has it been proven categorically one way or another?

cavedave

I believe there is no difference in weight between a harddrive full of information and one where every bit is set to zero (or one). The only difference is the change in magnetism of the bits and I do not think this alters the mass. But I could be wrong.

If you have an empty battery and add charge you increase the weight of the battery (by a tiny amount) so if you add charge to a harddrive that should increase its mass minutely. Time to go ask a physicist.

I think it comes down to how the is information stored. If it is stored on punchcards adding information will reduce the mass of the punchcard.

Genghiz Cohen

cavedave wrote: »

I think it comes down to how the is information stored. If it is stored on punchcards adding information will reduce the mass of the punchcard.

Pretty sure it's the same with CD's.

cavedave

It seems for a magnetic drive the answer is no
'I have a brand new iPod. It’s never been charged and has no data put on it. Will it weigh more after charging the battery and filling it with music and pictures?'

Jaafa

Interesting...

I was thinking that for something to be information it would have to be processed first by a brain or CPU.

Therefore a piece information's mass could be said to be proportion to the mass of the part of the object needed to process it (be it a brain or a CPU).

Of course the efficiency of the processor would have to factored in also.

In the case of the punch card, could it be said that the mass of the information is the bit of paper that comes off the punch card? I know this is relatively big but could that be put down to inefficiency of the system?

I suppose then could information be said to be proportional to the efficiency of the system as well as its mass?

Hope that makes sense. :P

Capt'n Midnight

cavedave wrote: »

'I have a brand new iPod. It’s never been charged and has no data put on it. Will it weigh more after charging the battery and filling it with music and pictures?'

It will have a greater mass when the battery is charged but will probably weight less since it is likely to be warmer and expansion means it will expand and be more bouyant in air.

FarmerGreen

Jaafa wrote: »

Has it been proven categorically one way or another?

Does information have mass?
Well it certainly has weight, the better it is the heavier it gets.
It has velocity too, proportional too its usefulness.
Obviously, getting in the way of a good idea whose time has come maybe somewhat dangerous.

Capt'n Midnight

If you concentrate information losslessly by using a compression program the what you are doing is converting repeated patterns into non-repeating, unique ones.

Optimised compression should yield a file that (apart form the header etc.) should from a statistical point of view be almost totally random. Don't forget that unless you know how to uncompress such a file it is relatively random data.

You can verify this by using something like www.7zip.org to compress things like pi to a million digits (in hex if you can) and comparing the output file size.



On that basis I'd have to say that information has no mass.

Genghiz Cohen

Moving away from storing data.
Sound can carry data, if I tell someone my name I have sent data through the air without changing the mass of anything between my teeth and the listeners ear.

FoxT

Information itself has no mass.

however, if you want to acquire, store, process, or transmit it, you will need things that have mass and/or energy.

amen

Sound can carry data, if I tell someone my name I have sent data through the air without changing the mass of anything between my teeth and the listeners ea

but have you ? you managed to speak which means your muscles moved which means you used some energy which means you prob converted some body sugars into energy which may have lead to a loss in your body mass.

As the sound wave travels it would have vibrated the air molecules. Could there have been collisions at a molecular level and maybe some of these lost enegry/mass?

:-)

Genghiz Cohen

Energy maybe.
But mass is energy....
And energy is mass

Kif, we have a conundrum!
Search them for paper! And ... bring me a rock!

Anonymo

I guess it depends on what you're counting as information! However, if I take the premise that you're speaking about digital info, i.e. information that is passed on through electromagnetic waves then information has no mass. If you want a deeper reason for this it's that photons (the carrier of electromagnetism) move at the speed of light. Mass (or inertia) is a relative concept as shown in special relativity so when we talk about mass we mean the mass of a body when at rest (i.e. zero velocity). The reason we know it's rest mass is zero is that the electromagnetic force has an infinite range (a non-zero rest mass would make the force more localised, e.g. the strong force, etc.).
You should note if you're getting confused about the old E=mc^2 that m here is not the rest mass - it includes momentum. In full this relationship reads
E^2=(m_rest c^2)^2+(p c)^2 where p is the momentum. So information has momentum but not mass, i.e. E=p c for photons.

Hope this was helpful

the_real_dave

Well, a thought is information right?

And a thought is simply electricity in your brain, which in itself is comprised of electrons, which have a tiny but tangible mass.

Going by that, if you focused all your "thoughts" into a certain area, increasing their potential power, and forming a collective mass, of thousands perhaps millions of electrons.

Seeing as this (or even a single electron) has a mass, and that everything that has a mass exerts a gravity, your thoughts could collectively affect something through gravity (which has an infinite range).

If enough thoughts were brought together (by a multitude of people perhaps), this force could even overcome that of friction, and you could move something, using your thoughts.

And that's just going by conventional physics....

Capt'n Midnight

the_real_dave wrote: »

Well, a thought is information right?

And a thought is simply electricity in your brain, which in itself is comprised of electrons, which have a tiny but tangible mass.

Going by that, if you focused all your "thoughts" into a certain area, increasing their potential power, and forming a collective mass, of thousands perhaps millions of electrons.

Seeing as this (or even a single electron) has a mass, and that everything that has a mass exerts a gravity, your thoughts could collectively affect something through gravity (which has an infinite range).

If enough thoughts were brought together (by a multitude of people perhaps), this force could even overcome that of friction, and you could move something, using your thoughts.

And that's just going by conventional physics....

when electrons are moved to a different shell in the same bond they would still orbit the same centre(s) so the overall gravitational centre wouldn't change.

The energy needed to remove all the electrons from a (1Kg ?) lump of copper is something similar to splitting the earth in two and even if you could move the valency electrons by a few nm without affecting the bodies cells it would only be a few thousandths of the mass of an atom

SkepticOne

FoxT wrote: »

Information itself has no mass.

however, if you want to acquire, store, process, or transmit it, you will need things that have mass and/or energy.

Is there such a thing as information if it is not stored or transmitted in some way? Can it exist independently of these things?

Mr Marri

I would have to go with no....

Can you changing somethings state/position and maintain the same mass. yes (i think) there for you can store info with out any change in mass. eg a pefect switch.

Mr Marri

As an aside....

All info is an decrease in entropy and hence requires an increase in energy and energy can (I think) be changed (exchanged) for mass. But entropy is complete crap and should be removed (for physics) as it just bugs me :mad:.

Capt'n Midnight

Mr Marri wrote: »

But entropy is complete crap and should be removed (for physics) as it just bugs me :mad:.

Lets round pi down to 3 while we are at it and et rid of uncertainty. :P


Back holes have mass but they eventually evaporate so the mass gets converted into Hawking radiation and it's still not clear if the information that was sucked into them is lost forever or not. (probably not)

SkepticOne

Mr Marri wrote: »

I would have to go with no....

Can you changing somethings state/position and maintain the same mass. yes (i think) there for you can store info with out any change in mass. eg a pefect switch.

But in order for information to be stored in the first place the switch must be there. So there must be a minimum amount of mass (or energy) needed to store a bit of information or, if quantum considerations come into it, a bit of information with a given degree of certainty.

FoxT

SkepticOne wrote: »

Is there such a thing as information if it is not stored or transmitted in some way? Can it exist independently of these things?

Thats a good one, more of a philosphical question than a science question, I think. Here is my attempt to answer:


Before the speed of light was determined, it would have been true to state that 'Mankind has no information about the speed of light'

this raises the question

' does the information exist & mankind just doesnt have it?'

or

' does mankind have no information about the speed of light because no information exists'

to my mind , the information did not exist ( unless Extraterrestrials found it out) until the speed of light was actually measured.

Also, even if the information DID exist - its existence would have had no effect on anything in the entire universe - so it doesn't matter if it existed or not.

amen

it's still not clear if the information that was sucked into them is lost forever or not. (probably not)

Was there not a conference last week where a british physicist talked about this? Think the theory was at the end of the universe too massive black holds left they collide and boom big bang but there would be energy ripples left over which should be detectable in the background radiation of the big bang as circular energy bands.

I think they found the energy bands but were oval instead of circular

paikea

Let's tidy up the house

In order for information to exist you need a cognitive being be it an organism or a machine capable of understanding it as information. A 2D picture means nothing to a blind person, the alphabet characters mean nothing to people from cultures that use ideograms, etc.

So information only exists on a specific format understood by these beings. Mass/energy will be needed to store or transport that information (at least between the types of cognitive beings/machines we know so far).

Information itself does not contain mass but storage and transmission of information will use mass/energy.

Anonymo

paikea wrote: »

Let's tidy up the house

In order for information to exist you need a cognitive being be it an organism or a machine capable of understanding it as information. A 2D picture means nothing to a blind person, the alphabet characters mean nothing to people from cultures that use ideograms, etc.

So information only exists on a specific format understood by these beings. Mass/energy will be needed to store or transport that information (at least between the types of cognitive beings/machines we know so far).

Information itself does not contain mass but storage and transmission of information will use mass/energy.

With all due respect, your argument doesn't tidy up anything!!!

Instead of defining information as a physical phenomenon - which may be quantified in terms of its mass and energy- you have instead defined it according to how it is perceived. This leads to problems with subjectivity and turns the debate into a philisophical discussion. The problem is further conflated when you return to the physical notions of mass and energy leading to thorough confusion. I realise that this forum is on the Popular Science thread so please don't read my comments as a harsh criticism. My only point is that what you are proposing leads to ill-defined notions.

amen

So information only exists on a specific format

this is just wrong. Information is still information even if we don;t understand it.

Egyptian glyphs were still information even though we couldn't translate until the 17th century.

maninasia

A light wave contains information according to it's peak and troughs, a wave has no mass ergo information has no mass. (wave theory as opposed to particle theory)

As another poster mentioned storage, recording, altering information is more problematic.

1. Transmit (you need some excited particles I believe)
2. Store (you need particles again), or perfect refraction or infinity or a closed loop universe where the wave goes round upon itself
3. Effect change/switch

You could use interacting waves to change information of the wave.
http://facstaff.gpc.edu/~pgore/PhysicalScience/Waves.html


Of course you still need something to transmit the waves in the first place.

As for the poster above, he meant that information is stimuli that has meaning in some context for its receiver (cogged from the internet). It's an interesting point but that is not the debate here though and even what we perceive as 'random' unintelliglbe signals could be created, transmitted and stored.

Amhran Nua

Bit late to the party here but I thought this would be informative, no pun intended:

Information converted to energy

Physicists in Japan have shown experimentally that a particle can be made to do work simply by receiving information, rather than energy. They say that their demonstration, which uses a feedback system to control the electric potential of tiny polystyrene beads, does not violate the second law of thermodynamics and could in future lead to new types of microscopic devices.

..

In recent years other groups have shown that collections of particles can be rearranged so as to reduce their entropy without providing them with energy directly. The breakthrough in the latest work is to have quantified the conversion of information to energy. By measuring the particle's degree of rotation against the field, Toyabe and colleagues found that they could convert the equivalent of one bit information to 0.28 kTln2 of energy or, in other words, that they could exploit more than a quarter of the information's energy content.

Might this then imply that information can meaningfully retain a discrete existence outside of mass and energy?

Irish_Elect_Eng

Yes, if you agree with the theory of L-space

Books = Knowledge = Power = (Mass x Distance^2)/Time^3

L-space, short for library-space, is the ultimate portrayal of Pratchett's concept that the written word has powerful magical properties on the Discworld, and that in large quantities all books warp space and time around them. The principle of L-space revolves around a seemingly logical equation; it is an extension of the aphorism 'Knowledge is Power':

Large quantities of magical and mundane books create portals into L-space that can be accessed using innate powers of librarianship that are taught by the Librarians of Time and Space to those deemed worthy across the multiverse. Because libraries with enough books to open a portal are often large and sprawling, those venturing into L-space may not necessarily know that they have arrived. The floor and ceiling of L-space follow the floor and ceiling of the library used to access it; the best example of this is that the central dome of Unseen University's library is "always overhead" [1]. In every direction and as far as the eye can see bookshelves stretch off, meaning the nature of any walls are unknown.

Essentially, all bookstores are potentially infinite in extent; gateways into literary hyperspace: "[a] good bookshop is just a genteel blackhole that knows how to read."


The concept of L-Space is similar to Lucien's library in the Sandman graphic novels of Neil Gaiman and to the Library of Babel of Jorge Luis Borges.
The name L-space is based on use of E-space (Exo-space) and N-space (Normal space) used by Doctor Who.

SecurityGuy

paikea wrote: »

Let's tidy up the house

In order for information to exist you need a cognitive being be it an organism or a machine capable of understanding it as information. A 2D picture means nothing to a blind person, the alphabet characters mean nothing to people from cultures that use ideograms, etc.

So information only exists on a specific format understood by these beings. Mass/energy will be needed to store or transport that information (at least between the types of cognitive beings/machines we know so far).

Information itself does not contain mass but storage and transmission of information will use mass/energy.

Fully agree. Information can be stored/transmitted only by the matter (mass/energy) so the simple answer to the thread question is YES.

maninasia

Amhran Nua wrote: »

Bit late to the party here but I thought this would be informative, no pun intended:

Might this then imply that information can meaningfully retain a discrete existence outside of mass and energy?

Interesting, is it related to entropy and as information becomes more disordered energy is lost?

I'm wondering how that can be. For instance if I had a jigsaw puzzle that was put together to make a picture and another that was put together in the wrong order, and then disassembled both, what would be the difference to the environment around them?

k.p.h

Yes .. obviously ..