3 ms·

Technically, doesn’t information have entropy, and therefore mass?

• Terr_ 3y ago
  Perhaps sometimes, but I doubt always: Consider a spray of photons, usually considered massless. Would they gain mass based on whether they encoded a message?
  • TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > Consider a spray of photons, usually considered massless. They are massless but have finite energy, which is the flip side of the same coin; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalenc.... > Would they gain mass based on whether they encoded a message? They already do encode something. Whether that's message or noise, depends on other parts of the information system that creates/processes those photons, and it is in those parts that the variable costs will be incurred.
  • GolDDranks 3y ago
    However, they contain momentum and energy. With an "photons in a mirror box" type of a system, this translates to the system "as a whole" having mass.