Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mass–energy–information equivalence


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 10:05, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Mass–energy–information equivalence

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Fringe theorie. Have not secondary sources. Have not notability. Jim Hokins (talk) 06:42, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep. I'm not seeing any valid reason for deletion here. Just because a theory isn't widely accepted doesn't mean Wikipedia doesn't cover it, provided it's been covered in reliable sources. Even the vaguest WP:BEFORE work demonstrates that this is a theory which multiple academics have at least deemed worthy of consideration. &#8209; Iridescent 08:06, 23 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Keep. Firstly, far from fringe. Secondly plenty of academic discussion per Iridescent. Fermiboson (talk) 09:34, 23 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Changing vote to Delete per XOReaster. Fermiboson (talk) 03:57, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

Keep - Searches uncovered numerous sources with significant coverage. No reason for deletion. ProofRobust 09:03, 23 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Keep per above. Kirill C1 (talk) 10:07, 23 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 10:40, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete Good grief. This is run-of-the-mill fringe-physics fluff supported by a press release and "publications" in junk journals. (In physics, conference proceedings count for jack.) Nor does the Google Scholar search linked above provide anything better. I mean, it's down in the dregs of MDPI by the sixth hit. There are absolutely no grounds for keeping this. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 18:03, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Could you elaborate on the physics? I'm not actually certain what's new about mass-energy-information equivalence; after all, mass energy equivalence is well established, and information is entropy, which because $$ dS = \frac{dQ}{T} $$ is a source of heat, etc. Fermiboson (talk) 18:34, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
 * There are multiple meanings of "entropy" (thermodynamic, Shannon, and von Neumann to name only the most familiar three), and multiple ways of defining a quantitative measure of information content (the major division being between probabilistic and algorithmic approaches). Carelessly equating these always leads to problems. Vopson actually claims that a "data storage device should be heavier when information is stored on it than when it is in fully erased state", based on (as far as I can tell) nothing more than careless equivocation. Let's say that our "data storage device" is a cylinder with a gas atom bouncing around inside. In the middle of the cylinder, we put a partition, as in the Szilárd engine; the atom can be either on the left or the right of the partition, so it takes 1 bit to specify which region is occupied. "Erasing" the device means ensuring that the atom is on a given side, say the left. (If we had a row of many such devices, we'd "erase" the message LLRRLRLLRRR... by setting it to LLLLLLLLLLL...) But the energy stored in the cylinder is the same whether the atom is on the left or the right, and it's the same whether we know whether the atom is on the left or the right. Any work we do on the cylinder, by pushing in a piston to squeeze the atom into a smaller region or whatever, bleeds back out into the environment. The internal energy of the single-atom gas is just the kinetic energy of that atom, and that is given by the temperature. As long as the device is at a fixed temperature, which all these thought-experiments presume, then the stored energy is constant. No change in energy, no change in mass.  Vopson's original paper is full of strange moments, like saying that the energy needed to lift a weight off one side of a balance is $$kT \log 2$$ rather than, I don't know, anything to do with the weight. More importantly for Wikipedia's purposes, the citations to it include nothing worthwhile: MDPI journals, the quantized inertia guy, and Vopson citing himself. We don't even have grounds to write about this as a noteworthy weird idea. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 20:51, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I see. On further inspection, changing vote to delete. Fermiboson (talk) 03:52, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
 * The theory doesn't need to be correct, but criticized. Article satisfies General notability guidelines. Kirill C1 (talk) 13:11, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
 * No, it doesn't. There is no reliably-published criticism, because there is almost no content to criticize. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 16:48, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
 * But you criticized it here. And there is publication in Journal of Physics: Conference Series. Kirill C1 (talk) 20:18, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Journal of Physics: Conference Series is not a reliable source. Outside of a few niche cases that don't apply here, conference proceedings in physics are basically unreviewed. And a discussion in a Wikipedia back-channel forum like this cannot contribute to notability. That's not how anything works. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 02:12, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * "Outside of a few niche cases that don't apply here, conference proceedings in physics are basically unreviewed." I disagree that a conference Journal is not reliable source. It's not like any guy could come there and give a talk on something.
 * "And a discussion in a Wikipedia back-channel forum like this cannot contribute to notability" I understand:) I mean that this fact proves that it can be criticized and analysed, which would give it notability. There is something to analyse there, even if it is not right. Kirill C1 (talk) 16:35, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Uh, that is literally the policy of physics conferences . Anybody who has been to one of the big APS meetings will know about the session set aside for fringe types. And those are serious conferences &mdash; we haven't even addressed the fact that some supposed conferences are complete shams. Earlier this year, Journal of Physics: Conference Series had to retract a whopping 232 articles in one go for being bullshit . Then, in September, they had to retract another 463 . And no, an explanation of the basic physics that the paper fails to understand is not an indication that "there is something to analyze there". XOR&#39;easter (talk) 22:25, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete – “For over 60 years, we have been trying unsuccessfully to detect, isolate or understand the mysterious dark matter,” said Vopson. “If information indeed has mass, a digital informational universe would contain a lot of it, and perhaps this missing dark matter could be information.” This statement alone brands Vopson as a crackpot, since the mass due to the heat energy (which is related to the the entropy) is already accounted for in the physics. Suggesting that dark matter, which is taken to have many times the expected mass of each galaxy, is somehow hiddenly added is very much not something that should be taken seriously. The stated "equivalence" via entropy is also temperature-dependent; it is like saying that velocity and momentum are equivalent (if you don't find the mass-dependence bothersome).  —Quondum 20:13, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
 * That quote is hilarious; great find. :-) XOR&#39;easter (talk) 16:49, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete Information is negative entropy. It cannot be related to energy without specifying a temperature. JRSpriggs (talk) 23:48, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete. just vapid fringe ramblings. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:41, 24 November 2022 (UTC).
 * There are articles on fringe theories in Wikipedia, too. Kirill C1 (talk) 13:12, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Articles are only retained if notability for the topic has been established. The fringeness in itself is not a criterion, though it usually serves to prevent the topic achieving notability.  —Quondum 15:32, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Sometimes it does, But here are plenty of sources:    Kirill C1 (talk) 20:34, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
 * These source are tabloid junk. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:46, 25 November 2022 (UTC).
 * The very first is a website called "Giant Freakin Robot" that says Vopson is crowdfunding for an experiment to prove that we are living inside a simulation. That's the kind of "source" I would invent as a joke. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 02:17, 26 November 2022 (UTC)


 * We have had this kind of argument before. When a crackpot manages to get a bunch of science-illiterate popular science rags to publish something about their theory, this does not establish notability.  The "quantized inertia guy" mentioned above even had a DARPA grant that made the news and was arguably more notable than this, but that got deleted as an article.  Rather argue that it should be included as a mention in some article listing fringe science examples.  —Quondum 21:44, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete per XOR&#39;easter mostly. &#32; Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:34, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete per XOReaster's rationale.--Srleffler (talk) 18:54, 25 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Comment Notability is necessary (for example, to prevent people from cluttering the encyclopedia with articles about their favorite cat videos), but it is not sufficient. Articles which are false, misleading, incoherent nonsense, or otherwise immoral should also be excluded. JRSpriggs (talk) 04:47, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia content may cause protest from readers. Then we should write about this as incoherent theory. Kirill C1 (talk) 16:38, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * @JRSpriggs, the idea that "notability is not sufficient" or that we don't host "immoral" articles is categorically untrue; provided the article is neutral and correctly sourced, notability is our criterion for inclusion. We currently host upwards of a thousand articles on crank theories; if it's a fringe theory and sourceable, it goes in, along with a sourced statement that it's a fringe theory. &#8209; Iridescent 19:41, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * And this isn't sourceable. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 22:22, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I have found the book Физика (Третья) 21 века. Том 1 in Russian -"Physics (Third) of XXI century", page 120 (2022) by Valeriy Asadov. It is written there "Other researches extrapolated physical nature of information for evaluating information mass, the culmination of this being the recent publication of "Mass–energy–information equivalence... These radical theories" - so the theory may be criticized, but it seems that it has some notability and influence. I found a mention in book "Cheating the Ferryman: The Revolutionary Science of Life" by Anthony Peake. "further, arguing that, once created, information has 'finite and quantifiable mass'. His mass-energy-information equivalence theory calculates that the mass of one bit of information at room temperature of 26.85°C is 3.19 × 10–38 kg. ... Information is the fifth state of matter"The idea and theory may be bizarre, but if it causes debate, then we should write about it. Kirill C1 (talk) 16:49, 26 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Cheating the Ferryman claims to bring together ideas from ancient philosophy, neuroscience, quantum physics and consciousness studies, and manages to explain a number of seemingly mysterious experiences such as precognition, déjà vu, synchronicity, near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences. Yeah, no, that's not a reliable source by any stretch of the imagination. The other book you mention purports to solve the problem of dark matter by saying that the Universe is 291,604,086,700 years old. Let's not pretend that's a reliable source, either. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 22:21, 26 November 2022 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.