Dark Energy as an Information Field and Attribute of the Universe

Abstract

The hypothesis that information is the same attribute of the Universe as space, time and matter, which appeared after the Big Bang and its carrier is the dark energy, is proposed. We assume that along with the development of matter and space–time continuum the development of information took place, i.e. its accumulation and complication of forms of its realization in the Universe, and the formation of information field. The proposed concept is close to or coincides with the bio-centrism concept. They substantiate the connection between information and dark energy from philosophical and physical positions. Including properties of “black holes” of the Universe. The rate of increase of knowledge and volumes of created information in the process of human evolution is very similar to the rate of increase of “mass” of dark energy of the Universe. They concluded that structured information in the information field, which forms the noosphere or thinking shell, plays a decisive role both in life of an individual and humanity. Comparison of quantum properties of information field of the Universe (noosphere) and dark energy may lead to new discoveries of the essence of life and the Universe. Studying and mastering of noosphere will mean the transition of humanity to a cosmic stage of its development.

1. Introduction

We live in a universe that is expanding and developing. But once upon a time, the Universe, as most scientists and religious thinkers believe, did not exist, and it arose from something or was created. There are many scientific theories of the origin of the universe, but most scientists have abandoned the idea of an infinite and timeless universe since the 20th century. The most developed, widespread and confirmed by indirect evidence recently got because of new astronomical and cosmological discoveries is the Big Bang theory. According to this theory, the Universe was born because of the Big Bang of some singularity (point) having structure and content about which we know nothing, except that the laws of physics known to us did not operate in it. We will probably never know the cause of the explosion, which occurred about 13.8 billion years ago. After the Big Bang came time, space, which expanded, and matter as elementary particles that later formed various elements (matter). The scattered tiny elements gave rise to the world we know today. After the Big Bang, the universe expanded and is still expanding today (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The birth of the universe. Source: Yandex.ru.

The main disadvantage of the Big Bang theory is the inability to explain the cause of the explosion and the mechanisms of the origin of space–time-matter [1]. Also, the Big Bang theory has difficulties when trying to describe the behavior of the Universe from the position of quantum mechanics. I believe that since the Big Bang emerged such attributes of the universe as space, time, matter. In modern science, several scientists believe that information may also be one attribute of the Universe [2, 3, 4, 5]. It is logical to assume that along with the development of matter and space–time continuum, there was the development of information, i.e. its accumulation and complication of forms of its realization.

The modern level of scientific cognition increasingly allows us to connect the progressive development of matter with the processes of reflection and with the accumulation of structural information. The accumulation of information in the process of life not only in an individual person but also in the evolutionary process of the development of society, the transformation of information into knowledge, is characterized in the last 100 years by an explosive character. By 2020 we estimate the accumulated volume of information at about 40 zettabytes, which is 57 times more than the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Explosive increase in information (source IDC).

The growth rate of knowledge and volumes of information created in the process of the evolution of mankind is very similar to the growth rate of the “mass” of the dark energy of the Universe. Its special properties allow it to claim the role of a carrier of information field of the Universe.

2. Dark energy—the main riddle of the fundamental physics of the XXI century

2.1 Religion about the creation of the world

The theories of the origin of the universe in various religious movements agree that it was created as a result of a conscious and spiritual action by God or the Creator. The major difference between scientific and religious theories of the origin of the universe is primarily in terminology. Scientific theories use the term “origin” instead of “creation,” the term “Nature” instead of “Creator,” etc. One can find many similarities between scientific and religious theories of the origin of the universe.

Religious teachings, in fact, have not strayed that far from the model of the creation of the world by the Big Bang. For example, the Bible says that the Word (information) was at the beginning of creation. The question of the reason for the appearance (creation) of the World has concerned thinkers since the fourth century A.D. 1600 years ago, the theologian Augustine the Blessed tried to understand the nature of God before the creation of the universe. He concluded that time was part of God’s creation, and there simply was no “before” the creation of the world. The belief in God’s creation of the world out of nothing is the basic doctrine of creation in traditional Christian theology.

2.2 String theory

The theory explaining the origin of the universe because of the Big Bang is not the only one. For example, string theory assumes a cyclical birth and death of the universe2. According to string theory, they do not build the entire world of particles, as we believe it today, but of infinitely thin objects with the ability to make vibrations, which allows us to draw an analogy with strings. With the help of complex mathematical apparatus it is possible to connect these vibrations with energy and hence with mass any particle arises because of one or another type of quantum string vibrations.

Like any unproven theory, string theory has several difficulties, which suggests that it requires enormous refinement.

2.3 Dark matter and dark energy

Scientists today believe that matter (that we see around us and in the Universe) makes up only less than 5% of the known Universe. The rest is a dark matter at 25% and about 70% is dark energy.

Dark matter is akin to ordinary matter in the sense that it can clump together (say, the size of a galaxy or galaxy cluster) and takes part in gravitational interactions in the same way as ordinary matter. Most likely, it comprises new particles, not yet discovered in terrestrial conditions. This itself testifies that there is a new, not yet discovered law of conservation in nature that forbids these particles to disintegrate. In our Galaxy, near the Sun, the mass of dark matter is approximately equal to the mass of ordinary matter. These particles must accumulate in the centers of the planets and in the center of the Sun (the matter is practically transparent for them, and they can fall inside the Earth or the Sun). There they annihilate with each other, and other particles, including neutrinos, are produced.

Dark energy is a much stranger substance than dark matter. The mystery of dark energy originated much earlier than the now common term. The starting point of this story was astronomers’ estimates of the masses of various galaxies. The estimated mass of the galaxies was about 10 times the total mass of all their stars. This means that some unknown substance handles this mass [6, 7, 8, 9]. This substance is called “dark energy”. It is the one that dominates the Universe.

They do not collect dark energy in clumps, but is uniformly “spilled” in the Universe. In galaxies and clusters of galaxies there is just as much of it as outside of them. The most unusual thing is that dark energy generates antigravity. This distinguishes it dramatically from ordinary forms of matter. The accumulation and increase of dark energy leads to the expansion of the universe.

2.4 Dark energy and the expansion of the universe

References astronomical observations show that today (and in the not too distant past) the Universe is expanding with acceleration: the rate of expansion increases with time [10]. In this sense we can talk about antigravity: the usual gravitational attraction would slow the expansion of galaxies, but in our Universe, it turns out that it is the opposite. Dark energy handles the expansion of the Universe with modern astronomical methods it is possible not only to measure the current rate of expansion of the Universe, but also to determine how it has changed. What can be the reason for the increase of an antigravity mass of dark energy, what processes in the Universe also occur at an increasing rate? One of such processes is the process of generation, accumulation and transformation of information in the Universe, in particular on the Earth. What is information?

2.5 Information and the information field

“Information is information, not matter and not energy” -N. Wiener.

Despite its widespread occurrence, the concept of information remains one of the most debatable in science, and the term may have different meanings in different branches of human activity. The modern level of scientific cognition increasingly allows us to link the progressive development of matter with the processes of reflection and with the accumulation of structural information (knowledge). Information, as a measure of ordering of material structures and their interaction, is an objective participant at all stages of organization of matter. Information participated in the processes of self-organization of matter, contributing to the emergence of life. The most important epistemological problem is understanding the place and role of information in the universe and human life.

One of the most common concepts in physics is the concept of a field. It also used this concept in many other fields of knowledge: cosmogony, astrophysics, quantum physics, biology, etc. The concept of a field also applies to information. The mathematical theory of the information field (IFT) is based on a serious mathematical apparatus [11].

The IFT theory uses computational methods developed for quantum field theory and statistical field theory, allows mathematical derivation of optimal visualization algorithms, data analysis methods and even computer simulation schemes. Application of IFT algorithms to astronomical datasets provides high accuracy images of the Universe and facilitates the search for weak statistical signals from the Big Bang.

2.6 Noosphere—the information field of the universe

They commonly referred the information field of the Universe to as the noosphere. В. Vernadsky introduced the concept of the noosphere as the highest form of development of the biosphere [12]. The central theme of the doctrine of the noosphere is the unity of the biosphere and mankind. Vernadsky in his works reveals the roots of this unity, the importance of the biosphere’s organization in the development of mankind. This allows us to understand the place and role of historical development of humanity in the biosphere’s evolution, the regularities of its transition to the noosphere.

One of the key ideas underlying Vernadsky’s theory of the noosphere is that man is not a creature living separately according to its own laws, he exists within nature and is part of it. This unity is primarily because of the functional inseparability of the environment and man, which Vernadsky tried to show. Humanity itself is a natural phenomenon, and it is natural that the influence of the biosphere affects not only the environment of life but also its thinking sphere.

But it is not only nature that affects man; there is also a feedback. And it is not superficial, reflecting the physical influence of man on the environment, it is much deeper. This is proved because recently the planetary geological forces have noticeably intensified. “ … we are seeing more and more vividly the geological forces around us in action. This has coincided, hardly coincidentally, with the penetration into the scientific consciousness of the belief about the geological significance of Homo sapiens, with the identification of a new state of the biosphere - the noosphere - and is one form of its expression. It is connected, of course, first with the clarification of natural scientific work and thought within the biosphere, where living matter plays a major role”.

Developing V. Vernadsky’s ideas, P. Teilhard de Chardin [13] called the noosphere a certain “shell of thought” over the Earth. He imagined mind as a flame in which the globe warms up and which gradually covers the planet, forming its new cover: “The Earth is not only covered by myriads of thought grains, but is enveloped by a single thinking shell that forms functionally one vast thought grains on a cosmic scale. The multitude of individual thoughts is grouped and amplified in the act of one unanimous thought.

The “thought shell” over the Earth, or the Noosphere, includes a multitude of individual thought-images (the author’s definition) of individual living beings of the Earth, including humans (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Thought-images of a person. Source: Yandex.ru.

One can consider that the biofield of an individual human being is his individual noosphere. Figure 4 shows a symbolic image of man and his noosphere.

Figure 4.

Thought-images of a man form a noosphere around him. Source: Yandex.ru.

Human noosphere is a structural unit of noosphere of the Earth, and the latter in its turn is a structural unit of noosphere of the Cosmos (Figure 5).

Figure 5.

Noosphere of the earth. Source: Yandex.ru.

Such a hierarchical network structure of the Universe noosphere testifies to the universal connection of events occurring in it. Astrophysicist V.A. Ambartsumyan once said: “I sneeze and the whole cosmos will shake” [14]. By the way, the modern quantum theory (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox) [15] does not deny it. The EPR paradox speaks of the presence of a single wave function of correlated (bound) quantum particles, i.e., of the universal connection of phenomena in nature.

The eminent scientist and naturalist N. Tesla believed that he received his scientific revelations by drawing information from the single information field of the Earth (noosphere) [16].

Being convinced that the Universe is alive and humans are to a certain extent “automatons” behaving according to the Creator’s plans, Tesla proposed an original theory of memory. He believed that the human brain does not possess the ability to remember in the sense that it is commonly believed (biochemically, or rather biophysically), and that memory is merely the ability of the human brain to retrieve this or that information (thought-image) from the noosphere.

Another eminent scientist, Albert Einstein, also believed that our universe is rational. “I want to know how God created this world. I want to know his thoughts, the rest is particular,” Einstein said [17].

2.7 Biocentrism

We should mention the doctrine of biocentrism [18]. Proponents of biocentrism argue that current theories of the physical world do not work. While physics is foundational to the study of the universe, chemistry is foundational to the study of life, scientists need to place biology before the other sciences to get a theory of everything. The theory of bio-centrism is based on the idea of the primacy of cosmic consciousness, cites in its proof the achievements of quantum physics.

Something specially created the world for the existence of life, not only on a microscopic subatomic level but also on the scale of the entire universe. Wherever life appears, the world grows around it.

Scientists have already found many indications that all matter in the universe, from atoms to stars, seems to have been tailor-made just for us. Other researchers speak of the principle of intelligent design and believe that the cosmos is such a fitting place for us for a reason. True, the second concept is a veritable Pandora’s Box, for it is a fertile field for all kinds of biblical interpretations and references to other topics, which in this case are completely unimportant or worse. Whatever these new discoveries are called, they have already sparked some serious discussions both within and outside the professional astrophysics community.

In the late 1960s, it had already become clear that if the Big Bang had been a millionth stronger, cosmic matter would have been blown around too quickly, and stars and planets would not have had time to form. As a result, we would not have existed. Even more incredible coincidence seems that all four basic interactions existing in the Universe and all constants are perfect for the flow of interatomic interactions, the existence of atoms and chemical elements, planets, liquid water and life. It is enough to change any of these constants slightly and we would not exist.

Such life-affirming physical values are woven into the fabric of reality like cotton and linen fibers into good currency. The best known of these constants is probably the gravitational constant, but the fine structure constant plays an equally key role in the existence of life. If this quantity, called “alpha, “were only 1.1 times or more above its present value, nuclear fusion could not take place in stars. The fine structure constant is causing so much scrutiny because the Big Bang formed only hydrogen and helium - and virtually nothing else. Oxygen and carbon are necessary for the existence of life (suffice it to say that oxygen is necessary for the appearance of water), but there is no shortage of oxygen precisely because it is formed in stars as one product of nuclear fusion.

The concept of biocentrism is based on the following principles.

• Perception of reality is a process in which our consciousness is directly involved our consciousness.

• Our external and internal sensations are inextricably linked. They cannot be cannot be separated into two sides of the same coin.

• The behavior of elementary particles - in fact any particle or object - is inextricably linked to an observer. In the absence of a conscious an observer, all elements of reality exist in an indeterminate state and are probabilistic waves.

• Without consciousness, “matter” is in an indeterminate probabilistic state. If the Universe existed before consciousness, it existed only in a probabilistic state.

• The entire organization of the Universe can only be explained from a biocentric perspective. The universe is finely tuned to support life, and it makes perfect sense that life creates the universe, not the other way around. The universe is simply a completely inconsistent space–time representation of itself.

2.8 The noosphere from the physical point of view

The manifestation of noosphere as information field, connected with the events in the nature and socio-economic sphere, allows us to speak about their universal connection. Nevertheless, the key question is still the nature and essence of noosphere.

The attempt to find an explanation of the noosphere as an information field from the physical point of view or from the point of view of a scientific materialist is of great interest. For example, the existence of the noosphere agrees also with the notion of black holes in modern physics. Nothing, even the smallest particle of light, can avoid the fate of being absorbed into a black hole if it is nearby. The existence of black holes is proven and we observe them in the Universe. But what happens to an object that is caught inside a black hole, physicists do not know and only speculate.

Previously, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking suggested that black holes can indeed destroy the entire essence of an object, leaving behind only a tiny quantum trace (electric charge or spin). But then where does the information go? In the late 1990s, Hawking rejected the idea that black holes extinguish information. Instead, the scientist suggested that information may indeed still exist, but in a very different form [19].

The expansion of the Universe testifies to a constant increase in the “mass” of dark energy since the beginning of the Big Bang, and this increase occurs at an increasing rate. Since the Big Bang the structure of the Universe, i.e. the increase of its information or non-entropy, has also been increasing at an increasing rate. In April 1982 (!) Academician M.A. Markov reported at the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences: “ … the information field of the Universe is layered and structurally resembles a “matreshka“, and each layer is linked hierarchically with higher layers, up to the Absolute, and besides an information bank it is also a regulator of the beginning in the fate of people and humanity” [20]. And if the information field of the Universe really exists, there is no better candidate for its material embodiment than dark energy.

2.9 The fractal principle of the universe

The development of the Universe and complication of its structure can be linked with increase of its non-entropy (information) but its entropy is increasing which eventually will lead to its thermal death. These two processes resemble by analogy the birth, development and death of a human, which is also a kind of the Universe.

It manifested fractal principle of the Universe construction because structure and form of some objects are similar or repeated in other objects, including those of quite original nature. For example, some scientists find similarity in the structure of galactic networks and neural networks of human brain. Fractal principle also takes place during realization of evolutionary processes of development of absolutely different observable systems. It is possible to find a deep analogy between birth, life and death of a human, and between birth, development and death of the Big Universe [21].

2.10 Similarity between the development of man and the universe

Human birth also resembles the Big Bang of some singularity - the size of an egg is about 0.1–0.15 microns. Then man grows, his mass increases, and is complexity as a system grows, with accumulation of his non-entropy (information). Eventually man is destroyed (dies), his entropy reaches a maximum, and his non-entropy reaches a minimum or zero.

The growth of non-entropy occurs in an open system because of inflow of energy and information from outside. Similar processes take place, apparently, in the cosmic Universe. Accumulation of information and knowledge on Earth, as well as in other intelligent worlds of the Universe, takes place with increasing pace, as well as the growth of dark energy mass, which gives reason to hypothesize about their strong interconnection or identity.

3. Conclusion

If dark energy is the information field of the universe.

Most scientists are of the opinion that, besides matter, there is in our world some as yet unknown to science substance, which creates antigravity, almost an order of magnitude greater than the gravity of the material component of the Universe. Before this discovery, astronomy and astrophysics were mainly concerned with the study of the material Universe, comprising atomic matter and radiation. After it will be finally revealed that it is not this part of the Universe that dominates, but a substance of immaterial nature, as yet unknown to science, it will be necessary to make a major revision of current cosmological ideas about our world, which will lead to a change in the cosmological paradigm, established based on discoveries of the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Someone practically accepted that humanity is at the stage of transition from post-industrial to information society. Information society is such a stage of society development, when the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) has a decisive influence on the main social institutions and spheres of life Information society is a special society, unknown to history. It is difficult or impossible to say what humanity will look like in, say, 100 or 200 years. However, we can probably agree with K.E. Tsiolkovsky that humanity humanity will pass to the “ray form” of its existence and will be spread in such form throughout the Universe [22].

If to suppose that already now informational essence of each person separately, humanity and informational essence of other inhabited worlds are already in the informational field of the Universe - noosphere, then “mastering” of noosphere will mean transition of humanity to the space stage of its development. The transition to the “ray form” or noosphere will occur at some stage of human development. By the way, this may explain why we have not yet met our brothers in mind. Because of the exponential growth of knowledge, intelligent civilizations do not reach the stage of building interstellar ships and interstellar travel. Even earlier, they master knowledge from the cosmic noosphere and go to the ray form, becoming practical gods. The same is waiting for humanity, unless it destroys itself earlier. In the radiant form it is possible to control matter, transforming it into various forms. Perhaps, the results by intelligent entities are displayed in the phenomena that we call UFOs. Otherwise, from the point of view of today’s science, it is impossible to explain the appearance, appearance and behavior of UFOs.

Philosophical understanding of the noosphere concept leads to a conclusion formulated by Georg Hegel “Everything real is reasonable, everything reasonable is real”. The hypothesis about a close connection between dark energy and the informational field of the Universe, if it finds confirmation, will lead to revolutionary changes in the basic provisions of science, the appearance of new fabulous technologies and radical revision of the tasks and lifestyle of society, putting not material but spiritual values at the top of the list.