How do we get something from nothing?

F/N: Nothing in the proper sense is non-being, utter absence of matter, space, time, quantum foams, fluctuations, mind, phenomena, ideas etc. What rocks dream of, it being reasonably acknowledged that rocks have no conscious existence to dream with. KF kairosfocus

Of related interest to the teleportation of quantum information via the 'quantum information channel' of quantum entanglement, classical information has now been erased from a computer via quantum entanglement, thus proving that classical information is a subset of quantum information: First a little background. counter-intuitive to materialistic thought (and to every kid who has ever taken a math exam), a classical computer does not consume energy during computation but will only consume energy when information is erased from it. This counter-intuitive fact is formally known as Landauer’s Principle.

Landauer's principle Of Note: "any logically irreversible manipulation of information, such as the erasure of a bit or the merging of two computation paths, must be accompanied by a corresponding entropy increase ,,, Specifically, each bit of lost information will lead to the release of an (specific) amount (at least kT ln 2) of heat.,,, Landauer’s Principle has also been used as the foundation for a new theory of dark energy, proposed by Gough (2008). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle

Yet, even though it is counter-intuitive that a computer will not consume energy while it is 'working' during its computation, but will only consume energy during the erasure of information, it should be noted that Rolf Landauer himself maintained that the information in a computer was merely ‘physical’. i.e. He, like all materialists, held that information in a computer was merely an ‘emergent’ property of a material basis, and thus he held that the information programmed into a computer was not really it’s own independent entity. Landauer held this ‘materialistic’ position in spite of objections from people like Roger Penrose and Norbert Weiner who held that information is indeed real and has its own independent existence separate from matter-energy. Landauer held this ‘materialistic’ position since he thought that it ALWAYS took energy to erase information from a computer and therefore the information in the computer must be, according to his reasoning, merely 'physical’ (merely emergent from a material basis). Yet the validity of that fairly narrowly focused objection from Landauer, to the reality of ‘transcendent ‘information’ encoded within the computer, has now been overturned. Information is now known to erasable from a computer without consuming energy. In fact, the erasure of information from a computer via quantum entanglement leads to the removal of heat from a computer

Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy - June 2011 Excerpt: No heat, even a cooling effect; In the case of perfect classical knowledge of a computer memory (zero entropy), deletion of the data requires in theory no energy at all. The researchers prove that "more than complete knowledge" from quantum entanglement with the memory (negative entropy) leads to deletion of the data being accompanied by removal of heat from the computer and its release as usable energy. This is the physical meaning of negative entropy. Renner emphasizes, however, "This doesn't mean that we can develop a perpetual motion machine." The data can only be deleted once, so there is no possibility to continue to generate energy. The process also destroys the entanglement, and it would take an input of energy to reset the system to its starting state. The equations are consistent with what's known as the second law of thermodynamics: the idea that the entropy of the universe can never decrease. Vedral says "We're working on the edge of the second law. If you go any further, you will break it." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110601134300.htm Scientists show how to erase information without using energy - January 2011 Excerpt: Until now, scientists have thought that the process of erasing information requires energy. But a new study shows that, theoretically, information can be erased without using any energy at all.,,, "Landauer said that information is physical because it takes energy to erase it. We are saying that the reason it (information) is physical has a broader context than that.", Vaccaro explained. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-scientists-erase-energy.html

Here is further work showing the physical, i.e. independent, reality of information

New Scientist astounds: Information is physical - May 13, 2016 Excerpt: Recently came the most startling demonstration yet: a tiny machine powered purely by information, which chilled metal through the power of its knowledge. This seemingly magical device could put us on the road to new, more efficient nanoscale machines, a better understanding of the workings of life, and a more complete picture of perhaps our most fundamental theory of the physical world. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/news/new-scientist-astounds-information-is-physical/

Of related interest, the following work also established the physical, independent, reality of information:

Maxwell's demon demonstration (knowledge of a particle's position) turns information into energy - November 2010 Excerpt: Scientists in Japan are the first to have succeeded in converting information into free energy in an experiment that verifies the "Maxwell demon" thought experiment devised in 1867.,,, In Maxwell’s thought experiment the demon creates a temperature difference simply from information about the gas molecule temperatures and without transferring any energy directly to them.,,, Until now, demonstrating the conversion of information to energy has been elusive, but University of Tokyo physicist Masaki Sano and colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating it in a nano-scale experiment. In a paper published in Nature Physics they describe how they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a "spiral-staircase-like" potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-maxwell-demon-energy.html Demonic device converts information to energy - 2010 Excerpt: "This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content," says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. "This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale," says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform Information: From Maxwell’s demon to Landauer's eraser - Lutz and Ciliberto - Oct. 25, 2015 - Physics Today Excerpt: The above examples of gedanken-turned-real experiments provide a firm empirical foundation for the physics of information and tangible evidence of the intimate connection between information and energy. They have been followed by additional experiments and simulations along similar lines.12 (See, for example, Physics Today, August 2014, page 60.) Collectively, that body of experimental work further demonstrates the equivalence of information and thermodynamic entropies at thermal equilibrium.,,, (2008) Sagawa and Ueda’s (theoretical) result extends the second law to explicitly incorporate information; it shows that information, entropy, and energy should be treated on equal footings. http://www.johnboccio.com/research/quantum/notes/Information.pdf J. Parrondo, J. Horowitz, and T. Sagawa. Thermodynamics of information. Nature Physics, 11:131-139, 2015.

Supplemental note:

Recognising Top-Down Causation - George Ellis Excerpt: page 5: A: Causal Efficacy of Non Physical entities: Both the program and the data are non-physical entities, indeed so is all software. A program is not a physical thing you can point to, but by Definition 2 it certainly exists. You can point to a CD or flashdrive where it is stored, but that is not the thing in itself: it is a medium in which it is stored. The program itself is an abstract entity, shaped by abstract logic. Is the software “nothing but” its realisation through a specific set of stored electronic states in the computer memory banks? No it is not because it is the precise pattern in those states that matters: a higher level relation that is not apparent at the scale of the electrons themselves. It’s a relational thing (and if you get the relations between the symbols wrong, so you have a syntax error, it will all come to a grinding halt). This abstract nature of software is realised in the concept of virtual machines, which occur at every level in the computer hierarchy except the bottom one [17]. But this tower of virtual machines causes physical effects in the real world, for example when a computer controls a robot in an assembly line to create physical artefacts. Excerpt page 7: The assumption that causation is bottom up only is wrong in biology, in computers, and even in many cases in physics, for example state vector preparation, where top-down constraints allow non-unitary behaviour at the lower levels. It may well play a key role in the quantum measurement problem (the dual of state vector preparation) [5]. One can bear in mind here that wherever equivalence classes of entities play a key role, such as in Crutchfield’s computational mechanics [29], this is an indication that top-down causation is at play.,,, Life and the brain: living systems are highly structured modular hierarchical systems, and there are many similarities to the digital computer case, even though they are not digital computers. The lower level interactions are constrained by network connections, thereby creating possibilities of truly complex behaviour. Top-down causation is prevalent at all levels in the brain: for example it is crucial to vision [24,25] as well as the relation of the individual brain to society [2]. The hardware (the brain) can do nothing without the excitations that animate it: indeed this is the difference between life and death. The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities. http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Ellis_FQXI_Essay_Ellis_2012.pdf

bornagain77

Fair Witness, first off I am not Querius. You falsely claim that: "And I can “move” a value from one physical bit-holder to another. That does not mean that they have any existence outside of those material substances." and yet

"qubits can be moved from one physical particle to another, by means of quantum teleportation. That is, qubits can be transported, independently of the underlying physical particle." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_information#Quantum_information

If information has no existence outside of the material substrate it is encoded on, as you falsely hold, exactly how is the transference of information from one bit holder to another accomplished minus any physical medium to do the transference of information? The short answer is that the transference of information in teleportation is accomplished via the 'quantum information channel' of 'non-local' quantum entanglement

Quantum Entanglement and Information Quantum entanglement is a physical resource, like energy, associated with the peculiar nonclassical correlations that are possible between separated quantum systems. Entanglement can be measured, transformed, and purified. A pair of quantum systems in an entangled state can be used as a quantum information channel to perform computational and cryptographic tasks that are impossible for classical systems. The general study of the information-processing capabilities of quantum systems is the subject of quantum information theory. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-entangle/ Quantum teleportation is a process by which quantum information (e.g. the exact state of an atom or photon) can be transmitted (exactly, in principle) from one location to another, with the help of classical communication and previously shared quantum entanglement between the sending and receiving location.,,, Quantum teleportation is not a form of transportation, but of communication; it provides a way of transporting a qubit from one location to another, without having to move a physical particle along with it. However, quantum teleportation of particles has been theorized to also be possible,,, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_teleportation Atom takes a quantum leap – 2009 Excerpt: Ytterbium ions have been ‘teleported’ over a distance of a metre.,,, “What you’re moving is information, not the actual atoms,” says Chris Monroe, from the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland in College Park and an author of the paper. But as two particles of the same type differ only in their quantum states, the transfer of quantum information is equivalent to moving the first particle to the location of the second. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2171769/posts Scientists Report Finding Reliable Way to Teleport Data By JOHN MARKOFF - MAY 29, 2014 Excerpt: They report that they have achieved perfectly accurate teleportation of quantum information over short distances. They are now seeking to repeat their experiment over the distance of more than a kilometer. If they are able to repeatedly show that entanglement works at this distance, it will be a definitive demonstration of the entanglement phenomenon and quantum mechanical theory. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/30/science/scientists-report-finding-reliable-way-to-teleport-data.html?_r=2

And if you want to claim that the quantum entanglement used in the teleportation of quantum information from one bit holder to another is merely a materialistic phenomena then you are in plain denial of the scientific facts:

Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php Quantum correlations do not imply instant causation – August 12, 2016 Excerpt: A research team led by a Heriot-Watt scientist has shown that the universe is even weirder than had previously been thought. In 2015 the universe was officially proven to be weird. After many decades of research, a series of experiments showed that distant, entangled objects can seemingly interact with each other through what Albert Einstein famously dismissed as “Spooky action at a distance”. A new experiment by an international team led by Heriot-Watt’s Dr Alessandro Fedrizzi has now found that the universe is even weirder than that: entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do. http://phys.org/news/2016-08-quantum-imply-instant-causation.html Experimental test of nonlocal causality – August 10, 2016 DISCUSSION Previous work on causal explanations beyond local hidden-variable models focused on testing Leggett’s crypto-nonlocality (7, 42, 43), a class of models with a very specific choice of hidden variable that is unrelated to Bell’s local causality (44). In contrast, we make no assumptions on the form of the hidden variable and test all models ,,, Our results demonstrate that a causal influence from one measurement outcome to the other, which may be subluminal, superluminal, or even instantaneous, cannot explain the observed correlations.,,, http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600162.full

bornagain77

@Querius: I am only finding material (matter or energy) ways of holding and processing qubits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubit#Physical_representation You know, I can technically say that 1's and 0's are non-material things, but they can only be manipulated if they are represented as states of a computer memory location, or neuron potentials in my brain, or as symbols on paper/screen. And I can "move" a value from one physical bit-holder to another. That does not mean that they have any existence outside of those material substances. I am seeing nothing to indicate qubits are any different in this regard. Fair Witness

Fair Witness, You must be trolling. All this is the most well-verified branch of physics. The double-slit experiment was first performed by Thomas Young in 1801. When an electron isn't measured, it's a NON-MATERIAL wavefunction called psi. Watch the video. Ignorance might be bliss, but knowing something about what you're talking about also has its benefits. Goodbye. -Q Querius

Well by golly Fair Witness, since you hold that information is not independent of any material substrate I guess they are just going to have close up shop and shut down the entire field of quantum computation. Where were you before they blew all those billions of dollars trying to get quantum computation up and running?

qubits can be moved from one physical particle to another, by means of quantum teleportation. That is, qubits can be transported, independently of the underlying physical particle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_information#Quantum_information

Also see measurement and entanglement, which are both central to quantum computation and are both completely antagonistic to materialistic assumptions,,, for instance:

Reality doesn’t exist until we measure it, (Delayed Choice) quantum experiment confirms - Mind = blown. - FIONA MACDONALD - 1 JUN 2015 Excerpt: "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it," lead researcher and physicist Andrew Truscott said in a press release. http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-measure-it-quantum-experiment-confirms New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It - June 3, 2015 Excerpt: The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,, “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said. Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer. http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!” – Scott Aaronson – MIT associate Professor quantum computation - Lecture 11: Decoherence and Hidden Variables Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory - 29 October 2012 Excerpt: "Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them," http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php Quantum correlations do not imply instant causation - August 12, 2016 Excerpt: A research team led by a Heriot-Watt scientist has shown that the universe is even weirder than had previously been thought. In 2015 the universe was officially proven to be weird. After many decades of research, a series of experiments showed that distant, entangled objects can seemingly interact with each other through what Albert Einstein famously dismissed as "Spooky action at a distance". A new experiment by an international team led by Heriot-Watt's Dr Alessandro Fedrizzi has now found that the universe is even weirder than that: entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do. http://phys.org/news/2016-08-quantum-imply-instant-causation.html Experimental test of nonlocal causality - August 10, 2016 DISCUSSION Previous work on causal explanations beyond local hidden-variable models focused on testing Leggett’s crypto-nonlocality (7, 42, 43), a class of models with a very specific choice of hidden variable that is unrelated to Bell’s local causality (44). In contrast, we make no assumptions on the form of the hidden variable and test all models ,,, Our results demonstrate that a causal influence from one measurement outcome to the other, which may be subluminal, superluminal, or even instantaneous, cannot explain the observed correlations.,,, http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600162.full

also of note:

“The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in a certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.” Anton Zeilinger - Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism - video (7:17 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4C5pq7W5yRM#t=437

bornagain77

Last time I checked, an electron can be detected with laboratory instruments, hence it is part of the natural material universe of matter and energy. All quantum experiments depend on manipulating the quantum state of an atom, an electron, or a photon. Material, material, material. Try again. Fair Witness

FW @ 33 challenged

I would like to see a demonstration of information being held and processed in the absence of some material substance to encode it.

Sure. Just look up the double-slit experiment performed with a single electron. 1. You fire the electron at wall with two parallel slits in it. 2. What comes out on the other side is a probability wave (aka a wave function or psi) that includes an interference pattern. The electron no longer exists as a particle--there is no material substance that encodes it! 3. Unless you "observe" the electron with some form of detection apparatus. This collapses the probability wave back into an electron. 4. Which can even occur backwards in time, which is called "quantum erasure". Don't understand? Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1YqgPAtzho -Q Querius

Fair Witness, in quantum computation it is the information that determines the final state of the material substrate.

"Finally, upon termination of the algorithm, the result needs to be read off. In the case of a classical computer, we sample from the probability distribution on the three-bit register to obtain one definite three-bit string, say 000. Quantum mechanically, we measure the three-qubit state, which is equivalent to collapsing the quantum state down to a classical distribution,,, followed by sampling from that distribution. This destroys the original quantum state." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing#Operation

i.e. The final answer in quantum computation is read off of the state of the particles at the end of the computation after the qubits, which are in superposition during computation, are measured and 'collapsed' to their particle state. In fact, there is also experimental work strongly supporting the fact that quantum computation must be driving the final state of proteins during protein folding:

Physicists Discover Quantum Law of Protein Folding – February 22, 2011 Quantum mechanics finally explains why protein folding depends on temperature in such a strange way. Excerpt: To put this in perspective, a relatively small protein of only 100 amino acids can take some 10^100 different configurations. If it tried these shapes at the rate of 100 billion a second, it would take longer than the age of the universe to find the correct one. Just how these molecules do the job in nanoseconds, nobody knows.,,, Today, Luo and Lo say these curves can be easily explained if the process of folding is a quantum affair. By conventional thinking, a chain of amino acids can only change from one shape to another by mechanically passing though various shapes in between. But Luo and Lo say that if this process were a quantum one, the shape could change by quantum transition, meaning that the protein could ‘jump’ from one shape to another without necessarily forming the shapes in between.,,, Their astonishing result is that this quantum transition model fits the folding curves of 15 different proteins and even explains the difference in folding and unfolding rates of the same proteins. That's a significant breakthrough. Luo and Lo's equations amount to the first universal laws of protein folding. That’s the equivalent in biology to something like the thermodynamic laws in physics. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/423087/physicists-discover-quantum-law-of-protein/

Of supplemental note, the 'travelling salesman' problem of computation, of which protein folding is an example, is one area where quantum computers greatly exceed classical computers:

Speed Test of Quantum Versus Conventional Computing: Quantum Computer Wins - May 8, 2013 Excerpt: quantum computing is, "in some cases, really, really fast." McGeoch says the calculations the D-Wave excels at involve a specific combinatorial optimization problem, comparable in difficulty to the more famous "travelling salesperson" problem that's been a foundation of theoretical computing for decades.,,, "This type of computer is not intended for surfing the internet, but it does solve this narrow but important type of problem really, really fast," McGeoch says. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130508122828.htm

bornagain77

I would like to see a demonstration of information being held and processed in the absence of some material substance to encode it. A single bit will suffice. A bit being changed from One to Zero. Just one. Anyone ? Fair Witness

Fair Witness claims that immaterial information 'has no existence outside of the physical things that encode it'. Which is an interesting claim for Fair Witness to make since quantum mechanics reveals that there would be no physical things if it were not for immaterial information. Wheeler famously coined "It from Bit" to capture the essence of what quantum mechanics reveals about the foundational nature of reality:

"it from bit” Every “it”— every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits. “It from bit” symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has a bottom—a very deep bottom, in most instances, an immaterial source and explanation, that which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment—evoked responses, in short all matter and all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe." – Princeton University physicist John Wheeler (1911–2008) (Wheeler, John A. (1990), “Information, physics, quantum: The search for links”, in W. Zurek, Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information (Redwood City, California: Addison-Wesley))

Wheeler is in excellent company:

"The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena." Vlatko Vedral - Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and CQT (Centre for Quantum Technologies) at the National University of Singapore, and a Fellow of Wolfson College - a recognized leader in the field of quantum mechanics. Why the Quantum? It from Bit? A Participatory Universe? Excerpt: “In conclusion, it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Thence the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: "In the beginning was the Word." Anton Zeilinger - a leading expert in quantum mechanics http://www.metanexus.net/archive/ultimate_reality/zeilinger.pdf 48:24 mark: “It is operationally impossible to separate Reality and Information” 49:45 mark: “In the Beginning was the Word” John 1:1 Prof Anton Zeilinger speaks on quantum physics. at UCT - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3ZPWW5NOrw

Moreover, if Fair Witness wants to claim information is not its own independent entity that is separate from matter and energy then he will be bucking up against the entire field of quantum computation in which 'non-local' quantum entanglement is used as a 'quantum information channel':

Quantum Entanglement and Information Quantum entanglement is a physical resource, like energy, associated with the peculiar nonclassical correlations that are possible between separated quantum systems. Entanglement can be measured, transformed, and purified. A pair of quantum systems in an entangled state can be used as a quantum information channel to perform computational and cryptographic tasks that are impossible for classical systems. The general study of the information-processing capabilities of quantum systems is the subject of quantum information theory. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-entangle/

In fact, in quantum mechanics it is information that is primarily conserved not matter-energy that are primarily conserved,,,

Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html Quantum no-deleting theorem Excerpt: A stronger version of the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem provide permanence to quantum information. To create a copy one must import the information from some part of the universe and to delete a state one needs to export it to another part of the universe where it will continue to exist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_no-deleting_theorem#Consequence

Supplemental notes:

Scientists show how to erase information without using energy - January 2011 Excerpt: Until now, scientists have thought that the process of erasing information requires energy. But a new study shows that, theoretically, information can be erased without using any energy at all.,,, "Landauer said that information is physical because it takes energy to erase it. We are saying that the reason it (information) is physical has a broader context than that.", Vaccaro explained. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-scientists-erase-energy.html New Scientist astounds: Information is physical - May 13, 2016 Excerpt: Recently came the most startling demonstration yet: a tiny machine powered purely by information, which chilled metal through the power of its knowledge. This seemingly magical device could put us on the road to new, more efficient nanoscale machines, a better understanding of the workings of life, and a more complete picture of perhaps our most fundamental theory of the physical world. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/news/new-scientist-astounds-information-is-physical/ Matter, energy… knowledge: - May 11, 2016 Running a brain-twisting thought experiment for real shows that information is a physical thing – so can we now harness the most elusive entity in the cosmos? https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23030730-200-demon-no-more-physics-most-elusive-entity-gives-up-its-secret/

bornagain77

No, you have it backwards, FW. Check out "the measurement problem" and something called psi. The wave nature of matter is actually a probability wave. Matter at the quantum level (and somewhat larger) doesn't actually exist in any specific location until it's observed. When it's observed, it collapses the probability wave and the entity becomes real in our sense of the word. Neals Bohr famously said that if that doesn't bother you, you don't understand quantum mechanics. Several experiments have demonstrated repeatedly to an insanely high precision quantum effects on entities as large as atoms and even viruses. Have you ever heard of quantum tunneling? -Q Querius

You mean the non-material information that has no existence outside of the physical things that encode it? Some people seem to think that information can exist and be processed without any material substance being involved. I must point out that information comes in bits. And bits need bit-holders. That's physics. Fair Witness

. . . or love, integrity, inner peace, generosity, or insight, consciousness, conversation . . . all are illusions. Except that you still generally obey laws, you expect to be paid for your work, you talk to people as if it mattered. Dionisio is simply affirming that non-material information has an existence and is not "nothing." That the fundamental nature of reality is based on information is widely accepted by physicists familiar with quantum mechanics. For example, Vlatko Vedral is a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and CQT (Centre for Quantum Technologies) at the National University of Singapore, and a Fellow of Wolfson College. As a recognized leader in the field of quantum mechanics, here’s how he expresses it:

The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information––and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena.

You do believe in physics, yes? -Q Querius

@Dionisio #25 Oh, good. So you are comfortable with the idea that there may not be any such thing as "nothing". That was kind of my point. It is a word in search of a reality that may not exist. Like "supernatural", or "free will". Fair Witness

@ your post #5, Querius, regarding Harry's : 'Rationality demands that we admit that from nothingness that is really nothingness, nothing comes,' I would be inclined to add, 'by very definition'. The 'creative nothing' peddlers always seem to think that oxymorons, gratuitous, logically-repugnant the wildest figments of the imagination are interchangeable with the paradoxes or mysteries of physics that have been proven mathematically. These would be the same people who would never have discovered quantum mechanics in a month of Sundays, for the same obvious reason. Though I once heard a Nobel physicist chuckling at the memory of Einstein's response, when he told him that some people thought they had disproved, I think, one of his relativity theories. Einstein's response was, not to worry ; it would all go away. He'd had his friend, a better mathematician, check the mathematics. I believe some are still trying to prove them, wrong. If you factor in the creator and his providence, even the simultaneous actions of entanglement, would not be viewed as disproof of the speed of light being the maximum speed achievable by matter, even in its most microscopic manifestations. As a cousin of mine used to say jestingly to his father, a bus-driver, to 'wind him up', 'If you had to leave your bus route, you'd be lost.' Likewise, the mechanistic Lego- 'aficionados', the Enlightenment's finest. Axel

Harry, great clip. That guy does such a good thing, it almost makes me believe there are TWO Richard Dawkins' ! soundburger

Fair Witness @23

When we are born into the world, we have nothing, and it takes time to acquire things; friends, family, wealth, knowledge, etc.

What about our soul? Our body? Parents? Siblings? Grandparents? Other relatives? Their love? Air to breath? Food, clothes and medicines that are given to us by those who care about us? Crib, stroller, etc? The book grandpa wrote for me? And most importantly, the love of our Creator? Don't we have all that? Do we need more? Dionisio

Querius harry soundburger We ain't seen nothing yet. :) Dionisio

I think it is only cultural conditioning that makes us think that nothing is the default condition, and having something is special. When we are born into the world, we have nothing, and it takes time to aquire things; friends, family, wealth, knowledge, etc. But when it comes to the physics underlying reality, our intuition may fail us. It may be that having something is the default condition, and having nothing is what is very difficult to achieve. Fair Witness

soundburger @ 21, I was totally convinced by that blurb, but then I found where some guy has proof that Richard Dawkins doesn't exist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZMzmMGSJVo harry

When I publish my bestseller explaining how 'everything' IS nothing, Richard Dawkins can be counted on to write a blurb something like, "Darwin assailed the walls of the fortress, Krauss took prisoners, and now, with this, Soundburger has accepted the unconditional surrender of that bothersome God twerp. We are at long last free of the pernicious influence of religion thanks to this startling triumph of SCIENCE! All hail Nothing!" soundburger

Querius @19 There has to be some way to work into this discussion Elvis Presley's famous "You Ain't Nothin' But A Hound Dog," but I can't think of a way to do it. harry

And of course, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." -Q Querius

Or maybe there are levels of Nothing. ;-) Mythological nothings: Easter bunny, tooth fairy (thank you, Dean), leprechaun Rhetorical nothings: "Aw shucks… tweren’t nothin’" (thank you, harry), "I did nothing wrong" (as often spoken by politicians and other criminals) Oxymoronic nothings: Objective Reporting, military intelligence, kosher ham Physical nothings: Planck space (tm), phlogiston, aether, tachyon, caloric, prima materia, red mercury, Bureaucratium (negative half life), multiverse Hopefully, this will help you understand Nothing. -Q Querius

soundburger @14 Specially the one given in Oslo, which sometimes seems like a joke. :) The one given in Stockholm seems more serious. Dionisio

harry, hee hee! soundburger

soundburger @12

‘Something’ is just what nothing feels like. Can I have my Nobel Prize now?

Yes, as long as you include somewhere in your acceptance speech: Aw shucks... tweren't nothin'. harry

Dionisio, why, of course it is. Or rather, it isn't. ;) soundburger

soundburger @12

Can I have my Nobel Prize now?

Isn't the Nobel Prize nothing? :) Dionisio

Eventually, I think they - and it will probably be somebody like Hawking or Krauss - will just announce that they've figured it out and the answer is that THIS is nothing. Simple, right? It turns out all along that there has never been anything, no universe, no bodies traveling within it, no time, nada. But nothing just happens to feel like something. You don't exist, nor does the planet, the universe or the laws of nature. No big bang, and nothing preceding it. No Star Wars movies. No ice cream. zip. This is all nothing, and no explanations necessary for how something came to be. 'Something' is just what nothing feels like. Can I have my Nobel Prize now? soundburger

Querious @9 Yeah, it crossed my mind when I read your post @5, that the "Easter Bunny" was a good choice harry

This is why I chose the Easter Bunny. While there might be levels of infinity sets, I'm not aware of any levels of non-existence. Thus, I can assume that every example of non-existence is equivalent to every other example of non-existence. For example "Quantum fluctuations in the Easter Bunny resulted in the Big Bang." "The laws of physics were created by the Easter Bunny." "The Easter Bunny is the source of the DNA and RNA code." "The multiverse appeared from out of the Easter Bunny." And so on. -Q Querius

Stephen Sparrow @7, That is what atheistic science keeps doing: It claims the Universe came from a nothing that turns out to really be a something. They get more irrational all the time. They even claim the preexisting laws of physics -- as though there could be laws of physics before anything physical existed -- brought the Universe into being. Even after the physical existed, the "laws of physics" -- which are only our precise descriptions of the ways in which nature demonstrates consistency -- have no power to bring anything into being. harry

Nearly 1000 years ago St Anselm wrote that it was impossible for the mind to have a perception of 'nothing' and if the mind attempted to and settled on nothing, the nothing would turn out to be something. Stephen Sparrow

Good comments all! Harry notes

Rationality demands that we admit that from nothingness that is really nothingness, nothing comes.

You can't even get quantum fluctuations from nothing, for you first need time for anything to fluctuate and appear from nothing. It doesn't work. Nothing is not empty space. It is non-existence . . . like the Easter Bunny. -Q Querius

Hi, Dean_from_Ohio,

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Indeed. Another thought: There really is no such thing as "preexisting laws of physics." The "laws of physics" are no more than our noticing and then describing the consistency in the behavior of nature. Where it seems always and everywhere consistent we call that a "law of physics," but that "law" has no more material reality or ability to be a causal factor in something coming into being than does the "law" that the shortest distance between two points is always a straight line. So it is silly to assert that "something came from the preexisting laws of physics." I think making such assertions is the result of being afflicted with that blindness of those who stubbornly and willingly refuse to see. There are indeed none so blind as these. harry

I do have to give Amana Gefter credit for ending with:

While cosmologists do believe that the laws of quantum mechanics can spontaneously generate a universe, this story just passes the buck. For where did the laws come from? Remember, we wanted to explain how something came from nothing—not how something came from the preexisting laws of physics. Removing causality from the equation is not enough. The paradox stands.

Rationality demands that we admit that from nothingness that is really nothingness, nothing comes. To then answer the question, "How is it then, that there is something?" requires one to understand that scientism's conception of reality is too limited. There must be a pre-existing and primary reality that transcends and is separate from space, time, matter, energy, quantum fluctuations, the laws of physics and every other kind of natural "something." That supernatural reality must be that which brought the natural realities into being. harry