A decade ago, physicists discovered a real problem: most of our energy is missing. Something, call it dark energy, is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.
Paul Gough, a prof at Sussex has an extremely interesting and simple idea that links dark energy to information entropy.
He looks at the energy of the universe not just in terms of overall mass and radiation, but particles at particular temperatures. The average energy per bit is estimated to give a measure of increasing information energy which creates effects that are equivalent in magnitude to dark energy.
His idea seems to be roughly as follows:
The number of particles in the universe is roughly constant but the universe is increasing in volume. As gravity clumps matter together stars form, creating hot spots which increase the average energy per particle and therefore total information energy.
As the universe expands its ‘bit space’ increases, and the information density decreases, rather like putting the same data on a larger hard drive.
The natural reduction in information energy density caused by expansion is lessened by the hot spot effect and the total information energy increases. The data on the bigger hard drive got bigger.
The equation showing the energy per bit is co-incidentally the same as that showing the characteristic value of a cosmological constant and it gives a value which is as low as the surprisingly low one that fits observation.
Assuming that the cosmological constant and information energy co-incidences are real, a resulting ‘negative-pressure state parameter’, equivalent to dark energy, causes the increased rate of expansion of the universe.