Listen, honestly: when was the last time you wondered how much your new selfie “weighs”? British physicist Melvin Wopson went further and weighed not only photos but also all the information that exists in the Universe. He drew a stunning conclusion: gravity is like an embedded data compression algorithm, and all of space is a huge server, while we are processes that “support” and “optimize” it.
He didn’t venture into metaphysical reflections. Initially, he worked on hard drive development at Seagate until he realized that information can be equated with material substance. He developed a concept where “mass” and “energy” are also parts of information, and invented the “second law of infodynamics”: data in nature do not seek chaos but tend toward order. He tested this on mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus—each new version of the virus reduces the level of informational entropy, as if updating code for more efficient operation.
And here’s the most interesting part. In a recent article, this physicist connects the idea of gravity with the concept of a computational system, based on the work of Verlinde. In his view, matter is assembled into clusters not for the romance of Newtonian laws but to save simulation resources. Every apple falling from a tree is like a small defragmentation of the system.
He does not sell any “red pill” to make everyone believe. He simply publishes formulas, and further verification is by experiments. Could it be an error or a system hack? Time will tell. But if these formulas are confirmed— we will be able to explain dark matter and quantum gravity at once, opening a new chapter in thermodynamics.
And what does this mean? Physics shifts into an area where the hypothesis that we live in a simulation gains measurable parameters—levels of informational entropy, “mass” of data, behavior of viruses and their mutations.
In reality, any technology for storing or transmitting information becomes a mini-laboratory for studying the structure of the universe.
The simplest experiment—to measure how mutation entropy changes—may turn out to be a key to unlocking fundamental secrets.
If the Universe is a program, then it’s quite possible to find a “bug report.” The main thing is for the system administrators not to notice that we’ve already started reading its logs.
Did you expect me to leave you alone today? Here is the answer, based on these ideas.