If everything is just an arrangement of particles and waves, is information just a change in that arrangement? And aren’t waves exactly that – change?
If that were true tho, doesn’t information stop existing at absolute 0 degrees Kelvin?
In: Physics
Very broadly, information is anything that can be reliably interpreted into some kind of meaning. It’s very contextual. DNA is said to contain “genetic information” because we’ve learned how to interpret it. A person who was able to determine the atomic structure of a DNA molecule but had no concept of it’s purpose or how it is used wouldn’t see information there. Similarly, a digital signal transmitting encrypted data is information to us because we have systems that can process it and extract meaning from it. To an alien race who knows nothing about our technology, it might just seem like meaningless noise. By that same token, there may be things out there we’ve observed that seem devoid of any meaning or value which may actually contain some kind of information if the means of interpreting it were understood.
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