Fumfer Physics 17: When Space, Matter, Information, and Time Must Scale Together
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Vocal.Media
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10/09
Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner flip their ongoing exploration of an information-based cosmos to ask what IC forbids. Rosner argues that in IC the scale of space, number of objects, total information, and cosmic age must co-scale, ruling out “fuzzy” universes where matter dwarfs information capacity. IC, like mainstream physics, demands self-consistency: macroscopic objects persist independent of viewpoint.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We have talked a lot over the last few years about the possible, or the lines of possible, actualization in reality within an information-based skeletal framework of reality while we have ignored an important inversion of this question relevant to the subject at hand. Not the possible but, what would not be possible under IC?
Rick Rosner: That is a worthwhile question. Under IC, the scale of space, the number of objects in a universe, the total information content, and the age of the universe are all proportional to one another. One scenario that would therefore be ruled out is an extremely “fuzzy” universe at our present scale.
Our universe is said to contain on the order of 10^85 particles—protons, electrons, and likely photons. Imagine a universe with this same number of particles but compressed to one-hundredth of the current diameter, or, equivalently, one in which every particle’s characteristic wavelength is one hundred times larger. Under IC, such a configuration appears impermissible unless some special agency is compressing the universe—say, a global gravitational collapse that has drained its energy and forced contraction. Even then, in a fully developed IC framework, I am not sure that would be allowed.
You cannot have a large disproportion between the amount of matter and the amount of information in the universe; those quantities must remain proportional. Only under specific physical conditions—such as a collapse that lowers the universe’s information capacity—could that proportionality change.
So, quantities that ought to scale together—information, time, and matter—may not diverge under IC. More broadly, this reflects a commitment to self-consistency in physical law. That is true under Big-Bang cosmology and, really, under any physics we can readily imagine: the world is self-consistent.
We do not, for good reason, envision a world where existence is contradictory—where an apple exists when you are two feet away but ceases to exist when you are one foot away and offset by eighty degrees. If something exists, it exists consistently; its existence does not depend on the observer’s vantage point. Objects do not flicker in and out of existence unless one has intentionally engineered a system to produce that effect. Persistence of entities is a baseline assumption—and it holds under IC, as it does under any reasonable physical framework.
That is all I have as well. It was a good question.
Jacobsen: I do not think I have asked it before.
Rosner: Agreed. I will try to think more about it—admittedly I may forget—but I will make an effort.
Jacobsen: And I may forget to ask again; that is also true.
Rosner: All right, I will see you tomorrow.
Jacobsen: Thank you. Thank you as well. Good night.
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