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How is information different than the set of physical arrangements in physics?

Physics Asked by wedecide on November 12, 2020

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-the-universe-remembers-information

The memory principle might even solve the black-hole information
paradox that Hawking discovered in the 1970s. In the usual analysis,
black holes are pathologically forgetful. The only record they keep of
the matter that falls in is its mass, spin, and electric charge. Over
time, black holes gradually slough off particles—in the form of
Hawking radiation—eventually shrinking away completely. The finer
details of their swallowed contents are lost and presumed destroyed.
The paradox arises because such thorough amnesia is not ever supposed
to happen in physics. But in 2016, working with Hawking and Cambridge
theorist Malcolm Perry, Strominger suggested that the vacuum of
general relativity may provide a memory matrix that preserves this
information in the universe, beyond the black hole’s demise. A black
hole forms in an empty region of spacetime; after it evaporates, that
region is empty once more. But it is a different empty.

The article seems to treat information as being different to the arrangement of particles which is used to describe them, but if so does information have a physical store? Where is information stored if not through the arrangement of particles?

2 Answers

It's different in one way because of entanglement. Knowing everything you could know individually about entangled particles does not give you all the information about a system. There is information in the entangled state itself that isn't represented by any one particle's state.

I am leaving out whether information is physical and what information is precisely because they are not needed to answer the question in the title. In some interpretations or theories the information of entanglment is physical (e.g. string theory wormholes or hidden variables), and in others information is tied to agent-updating and is not purely physical (e.g. qbism).

Answered by J Kusin on November 12, 2020

Information is comprised of correlations between physical states. The correlations can be classical or quantum mechanical; and can involve arrangements of particles and/or configurations of fields.

Words printed in a book correlate to whatever they describe. If the words describe an abstract idea, the correlation is between the words and the mental states (the ideas) they represent.

"A different empty" would refer to a locally altered structure of the curvature of space, which is effectively a field configuration. Note that this is a theoretical construct that is highly plausible, but not something that has been actually observed or experimentally confirmed.

Answered by S. McGrew on November 12, 2020

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