Time

The shorter the word the more we have to say to explain it. Those are the words we are all supposed to know, and we ask ourselves the meaning of those words since we are young. We give ourselves a simple operational answer and that is the end of the story. Time is what a clock tells us. That is enough for most of us.

As I grew older though, that element of my worldview became more relevant. To this day I am not satisfied with my answer to the question, what is time? I have written two posts on the Pulse of the Universe, now I retake the question and add an element I find intimately linked to this one: Information.

Time and Information

We happen to be in a bubble universe that has a memory of the moment of inflation. The event horizon is accelerating and it seems that we will never see the collision with other bubble universes hitting around our own. This bubble, for the most part seems isotropic, uniform, and homogeneous, but there is actually a preferred reference frame and a preferred point in time when everything relevant to us started.

If that is so, as Guth et al. are telling us, as I reported in The Pulse of the Universe (Second Part), then Information is a natural consequence of that fateful moment. Since there is a past, then there is a future, and therefore a probability that an event may or may not happen, alas that is what information is. If the Sun comes out tomorrow, we do not get that much information, but if it does not, then there is a lot of information received.

Does Information have weight?

As much as the record of the beginning of time has weight. Maybe within Guth's recent theory, one could calculate the energy content of the initial mark, "the persistence of memory'.