If the universe is a giant computer, this is the amount of bits needed to run this machine

As you may know, bit (Binary digit) is the most basic and smallest unit used to represent information in computers and digital communications. Every 8 bits makes 1 byte, 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes. So if the universe is a giant computer, how many bits does it take to 'run' it?

The visible universe can hold about 6x10^80 bits of information.

According to the scientist's calculations , the visible universe (the universe we observe) can contain about 6x10^80 - or 600 million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion (600 million trillion trillion trillion) Trillion trillion trillion trillion) - bit of information.

About six decades ago, a German-American physicist, Rolf Landauer, proposed an analogy between information and energy, because erasing a digital bit in a computer generates a small amount of heat, it's a form of energy.

Albert Einstein created the famous equation E=mc^2, which theorized that everything with mass has energy, so it can also be said that all physical forms of matter in nature have energy. . Melvin Vopson, a physicist at the University of Portsmouth in the UK, surmises that a relationship might exist between information, energy and mass.

"Using the principle of mass-energy-information relativity , I speculate that information may be the dominant form of matter in the universe ," Vopson said. The information could even explain dark matter, he added, the mysterious substance that makes up most of the matter in the universe.

A relationship may exist between information, energy, and mass.

Vopson began determining the amount of information in a subatomic particle, such as a proton or neutron. Such entities, he says, can be fully described by three basic characteristics: mass, charge and spin (a physical quantity, which has the nature of angular momentum and is a concept purely quantum) of them.

Vospon applied the important paper "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" by Claude Shannon (American mathematician, electronic engineer, and cryptologist, known as the father of information theory). By considering the maximum efficiency with which information could be transmitted, Shannon introduced the concept of bits, which can receive and interpret two values ​​of the binary digit 1 or 0 and used to measure units of information, like distance measured in feet or meters or temperature measured in degrees.

Using Shannon's formulas, Vopson determined that, each elementary particle in the observable Universe is equivalent to 1,509 bits of encoded information a. Next, Vopson uses the famous Eddington Number, which refers to the total number of protons in the observable Universe (currently 10^80). Vopson derived a formula for estimating the number of all the elementary particles in the universe. He then adjusted his estimate based on the temperature of the observable matter (stars, planets, interstellar medium, etc.)

So far, a hypothesis is still a hypothesis.

From this, Vopson calculates that the total amount of information to be encoded is equivalent to 6x10^80 bits. This number of bits is equivalent to 7.5×10^59 zettabytes, or 7.5 octodecillion (57 zeros) zettabytes. Compared to the amount of data generated worldwide in 2020 of 64.2 zettabytes, this number can be described as 'a heaven and an abyss'.

He admitted that it was possible his assumption was wrong and that perhaps other particles could also store information (Vopson focused on particles like protons and neutrons but ignored particles like electrons, neutrinos and quarks, because , according to Vopson, only protons and neutrons can store information about them). However, so far, the hypothesis is still just a hypothesis. There's no way to know if that's true or not.