Is the amount of information in the universe finite?

Question

I'm talking about now information, similar to mass, not things that have happened. Theoretically, if you know all there is to know about something & some portion of information about that something's surroundings, you also know both its past and its future with clarity of knowing growing ever more fuzzy with distance (in time) from now in either future or past directions. My hunch is that the answer is no, but that assumes that an original idea creates information where there was none before - yet, how would one quantify an idea? Anyway, if info changes over time, what happens if we plot it? Interested to see what sort of thoughts everyone has... thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Yes, it is finite in a literal, practical sense; however, due to nondeterministic matter/energy systems, there are infinite *possibilities* for what that finite information entails.

Answer 2

Is it right to ask if the amount of information "in the universe" is finite?

Is information "out there" or is it "in here"?

Without observers there would be no information at all.

So it would be more appropriate to ask, "is the amount of information that any single observer can have finite or infinite"?

The answer to this would be finite - limited by the observers positon, constrained by time, constrained by the effort of gathering information (fatigue) etc

Another argument in favor of the above is that information is a "processed" output of an observer which consumes energy during its creation

In the Maxwell's demon experiment (where the demon between the two boxes tries to violate the second law of thermodynamics) it is argued by some that simply "knowing" (observing/judging) which molecules to allow through the gate and which ones to ignore consumes energy and hence increases the entropy of the whole system

The gathering of information is an energy consuming process. Some of it is like grazing in a meadow, some of it is like chewing the cud, some of it is like assimilating and converting into different forms. But all these consume energy - and having consumed energy automatically become irreversible processes (by the second law of thermodynamics)

In short information does not passively hang around out there waiting to be had - we have to reach out and take it - all the while consuming time and energy to do so

Answer 3

The universe, while gigantically expansive, is still a closed system.  And a closed system can never contain an infinite amount of information.