There is no shortage of debate about the nature of dark matter, a mysterious substance that many believe makes up a large proportion of the total mass of the universe, in spite of never having observed it directly. Now some believe that Landauer’s principle, which dictates the physical nature of information, is raising a startling possibility: that dark matter might be information itself, writes Melvin Vopson.
One of the greatest curiosities of modern physics is the nature of the mysterious substance known as “dark matter”. It is widely accepted that the make up of the Universe is about 5% ordinary (baryonic) matter consists of baryons — an overarching name for subatomic particles such as protons, neutrons and electrons, 27% dark matter and, 68% of the universe is made of something even more puzzling called “dark energy”. Unlike normal matter, dark matter does not interact with the electromagnetic force. This means it does not absorb, reflect or emit light, making it extremely hard to spot.
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