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Physicist Melvin Vopson is trying to prove that information has a physical presence. If he can do that, it could lead to a fundamental shift in how we think about the universe and could even explain the presence of dark matter and dark energy.
Vopson, PhD, studies information theory at University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom and wants to conduct an experiment to confirm that elementary particles have measurable mass. If it turns out the way he expects, the results would prove that information has mass and is the fifth state of matter in the universe, along with gas, plasma, liquid, and solid states.
“More profoundly, it will show that our universe is mathematical and it would bridge a link between mathematics, computing, and the material [or] physical world,” Vopson said in an email. “This can radically transform the way we look at everything in physics and other sciences. This new component of matter in the universe could be the missing link in explaining so many unexplained phenomena including dark matter and dark energy.”
The mass-energy-information equivalence principle Vopson proposed in an earlier 2019 AIP Advances paper assumes that a digital information bit—used for digital data storage today—is not just physical, but has a “finite and quantifiable mass while it stores information.” This very small mass is 3.19 × 10-38 kilograms at room temperature.
If you erase that bit of information, you would lose a tiny amount of mass, and therefore an equivalent amount of energy, Vopson hypothesizes. For example, if you erase one terabyte of data from a storage device, it would decrease in mass by 2.5 × 10-25 kilograms, a mass so small that it can only be compared to the mass of a proton, which is about 1.67 × 10-27 kilograms.
An experimental proof could explain cosmic mysteries like dark matter, because the physical properties of the bits of information mimic what dark matter appears to be—small bits of mass particles without charge or spin, Vopson says.
“We definitely need to look at cosmological models and try to plug in this new component to explain the dynamics of the galaxies and the accelerated expansion of the universe,” he says. Perhaps the extra mass of the information contained in the most basic particles can account for the mass of dark matter.
His initial, rough calculations indicate that 10 to the power of 93 bits of information would explain all of the “missing” dark matter.
These ideas of mass-energy equivalence are not new. In 1961, physicist Rolf Landauer first proposed the idea that a bit is physical and has a well-defined energy. When one bit of information is erased, the bit dissipates a measurable amount of energy. Years before this concept of information entered the picture, Albert Einstein established that mass equals energy.
Scientists believe that the observable matter in the universe has a specific information content. For example, typical atoms—containing protons, electrons, and neutrons—hold not only the combined masses of these subatomic particles, but also the minuscule masses of the information they require to interact with each other and the rest of the universe. This type of information could be considered the “DNA” of the particles, Vopson says.
When combined, these two “information conjectures” make specific predictions about the mass of information in the universe. For example, scientists have estimated that a single particle contains 1.509 bits of information, representing characteristics like the mass, charge, and spin of the particle. When they multiplied this single particle’s information by approximately all of the particles in the universe (known as the Eddington Number), they ended up with an estimate of 6.036 × 10^80 bits of information in the universe. (This is just one calculated estimate.)
Confirming that information is the fifth state of matter touches on a wild idea—that the universe is actually a computer simulation. That’s because gravity becomes evidence for this potential reality. Scientists have suggested the simulation hypothesis before as an academic exercise, but Vopson’s latest paper on this idea, published in April 2025 in AIP Advances, goes further, describing gravity as the mechanism that forces information to move from chaos into order.
If information is indeed a key component of the universe, then perhaps a computer somewhere is running our whole world as a simulation.
THE EXPERIMENT
Vopson first described his proposed experiment in his March 2022 paper in the journal AIP Advances.
A matter-antimatter annihilation process would shoot a beam of positrons at the electrons in a piece of metal. Positrons and electrons are both subatomic particles, with the same mass and magnitude of charge. However, positrons are positively charged, and electrons are negatively charged. A sheet of metal has many free electrons, increasing the probability of collision with the incoming positrons.Two infrared, low-energy photons—particles of electromagnetic radiation—should emerge. A positron-electron annihilation should produce energy equivalent to the masses of the two particles, Vopson says. It should have the predicted wavelength of about 50 microns. The annihilation should also produce an extra dash of energy as the information content of the particles is erased.
No large-scale particle accelerator or particle collider is needed, Vopson says. “In fact, we need rather slow positrons, so the main challenge is to slow them down at thermal velocities. The experiment is challenging, but not unachievable.” The infrared photons have very specific markers, so they should be easy to distinguish from any other energy the particles emit.
Vopson hopes collaboration with other scientists will yield a successful outcome, which would confirm hypothetical ideas about the energy and mass of information and how it relates to the physical universe.
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Before joining Popular Mechanics in 2022, Manasee Wagh worked as a science journalist, a newspaper reporter, a technical writer, and an engineer. She has a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering and a master’s degree in journalism. Her favorite stories are about the discoveries that unearth even deeper mysteries, and she enjoys helping people understand the science behind the remarkable world we live in. She lives in the Northeast with her two favorite people and one curious, feisty feline, but always seeks to combine her love of food, nature, and travel into memorable journeys away from home.