How Much Information is in the Universe?

There’s quite a bit of stuff in the universe, to put it mildly.

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Hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars, each with … rather a lot of particles in them. And then there’s all the stuff that isn’t stars. The dark matter, black holes, planets, and the particles and radiation in between the stars and galaxies. Stuff EVERYWHERE! But… is the universe actually made of stuff? An increasing number of physicists view the universe – view reality as informational at its most fundamental level. But how big a memory bank would you even need to compute a universe? Seriously, let’s figure it out.

Computational Capacity of the Universe (2001), by Seth Lloyd

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سلطان الخليفي

[DRiungi]

"but what are a few orders of magnitude between friends?"
i love this show.

[synonymous]

I refuse to see anything "behind the scenes" on this channel so that I have no reason to believe Matt isn't magically floating through space.

[EldafoMadrengo]

This channel re kindled my love of physics and learning almost a year ago. I'm now back in education studying physics and loving it. Thanks PBS spacetime and an especially huge thanks to matt! keep up the awesome work!

[JoshSaysStuff]

"It would be the end...of spacetime."

I exited full-screen mode because my Pavlovian mind automatically assumed the episode had ended.

[ChintanPandya]

PBS space-time is not the channel we deserve, but we the one we really need. If anyone is reading this archived comment after 100 years. Ssup? How's your house boat? There was something solid like the floors you stand on in our times...it was called land.

[gravijta]

Due to a universal stack overflow, the flavor of many meats has been overwritten and defaulted to plain "chicken flavor".

[DheerajBhaskar]

"What's a few orders of magnitude between friends" 😂😂😂

[mikamo]

Man, all these standalone videos are leading up to the Holographic Universe Avengers movie.

[donfinch]

I admire you. (and your viewers who interact) Intelligent, well spoken, etc. This subject is beyond my intellect, but I do understand the basics of what you are presenting. I've always been fascinated by this, and enjoy watching the advancement of science and its realisation of space time. We've come a long way, and hopefully a long way to go. Thanks sooo much for your show and the effort you put in to it.

[jamesraymond]

Matt's videos are always just beyond my level of understanding, but close enough to keep me hooked.

[sebastianelytron]

The universe is under no obligation to tell us how much information it has. Respect its privacy.

[jasonwalker]

How much information is in the universe? "All of it"

[stephen]

Your Neverending Story reference has earned my undying subscribership.

[Cavistus]

this is one of the only channels that manages to make my head hurt.

[Thealienigloo]

I think all of these numbers can be equally explained as:

Big AF

[SupLuiKir]

What if quantum mechanics is just an artifact of compression to make it easier to compute macroscopic physics without needing as many resources as if you were actually going to try simulating each particle down to each planck-voxel in phase-space.
If we were to build our own universe simulation, how much would implementing quantum mechanical phenomena help in decreasing the required computational load?


Indulging in the Simulation hypothesis for a moment: Humanity's exploration of physics appears dangerously analogous to reverse engineering unknown computer hardware. I think we're becoming aware of things that weren't expected to be noticable. Who knows, we could eventually come across a physics glitch that we could exploit for FTL communication or something.

[Lyn]

I look forward to these episodes more than pretty much anything. It helps keep me going some days. Thank you ever so much, as sincerely as I can convey in a YT comment. This is extremely needed; Darkest timeline and all that...

[AWSMcube]

I cannot even begin to imagine the types of compression algorithms that our computer scientist buddies would come up with to compress the universe

[hunterhofmann]

At 9:15 when he says Space Time I started looking for a new video to watch thinking it was the end but it definitely wasn’t.

[sachiperez]

Your videos are so dense (in a good way)!