vincent

I think you mean "asymptotically free".

The above is really a result of a basic misunderstanding of the mass-energy equivalence you and martin seem to share. The mass-energy equivalence is not meant to apply in this way to individual elementary particles. Rather, it is a statement about the general interconvertability between mass and energy. The kind of statement the mass-energy equivalence does make about photons, again in the context of quantum electrodynamics, is that it’s energy can be converted to invariant-mass of electrically charged particles like the electron and vice versa. For further clarification, if you need any, you can consult any introductory text on the subject of special relativity. Whichever text you might choose, I am quite confident that you will find nowhere in it any statements along the lines of what you and martin are saying. Respectfully, Vince.

I pm'd you.

It appears that you have misjudged my intentions for intiating this thread. I'm not focussing on the idea that "energy is required to encode information". What I'm focussing on is the possible implication of the black hole area-entropy relation that energy and information are somehow interconvertible in the context of black hole physics, sort of analogous to the way that the mass-energy equivalence says that energy and invariant-mass are interconvertible. I'm sorry, but the idea of this thread was to refocuss the discussion on what in my opinion should have been the focus in the other thread. Merging the two threads not only makes no sense, but it would represent an abuse of authority on your part.

I’m initiating this thread because I don’t think people appreciated that this was the key part of Wheeler’s remarks. One of the main themes of the first thread was the obvious point that energy is needed to physically encode information. We don’t really need to examine the concepts of time or interpretive issues having to do with quantum mechanics to understand why this statement makes sense. But the question of the relation between information and energy takes it’s sharpest form in the case of black hole physics. This is because of the famous black hole area-entropy relation which says that the entropy of the event horizon is completely determined by the mass of the black hole. There is no analogous statement relating the energy of a system and the information encoded in it anywhere else in physics. This statement doesn’t just say that the entropy of a black hole is encoded in it’s mass. It suggests that somehow black hole entropy and black hole mass are the same thing! The question than is what does this say about the nature of the fundamental degrees of freedom of black holes? Is it possible that in some sense black hole degrees of freedom don't gravitate in any ordinary way? Is it possible that (as I believe someone suggested in the other thread) information can in some sense gravitate? Note that here we're discussing the entropy of a black hole and not the problem of how information encoded in matter that falls into a black hole is recovered. The problems associated with this latter subject are usually referred to as the black hole information problem.

Hi Martin, You didn't respond to my earlier post: What I pointed out there was that contrary to your above remark, there is nothing about the existence of massless particles that implies that the applicability of the mass-energy equivalence is somehow not universal. In fact, it is in terms of the mass-energy equivalence that we understand why there are processes in quantum electrodynamics in which photon energy is converted into electron and positron mass and vice versa! I'm just curious why you would believe that the mass-energy equivalence, which is perhaps the world's most famous equation, doesn't apply to massless particles?

Who do you think you are? You’re not a moderator and the posts have kept well within the posting guidelines. No one is forcing you to participate here.

What are you talking about!? There is nothing about the existence of massless particles that implies that the applicability of the mass-energy equivalence is somehow not universal. In fact, it is in terms of the mass-energy equivalence that we understand why there are processes in quantum electrodynamics in which photon energy is converted into electron and positron mass and vice versa. Okay, bye.

Where do you live?

This is the wrong forum for your question. You should have it reposted in the quantum theory forum.

Hi Mr Skeptic, I'm sorry but this is actually the wrong forum for this post. Try the classical physics forum. Hi Martin, This response is inappropriate. As a moderator you're responsibility was to tell Mr Skeptic what I just did and then move his post to a more appropriate forum.

No, when it comes to physics, Ben likes to think in terms of physics.

I disagree. The underlying reason for the absence of mixing of the charged leptons is that neutrinos are (very nearly) massless. Consider the neutrinos in the charged weak current for leptons in terms of mass eigenstates. Since the different neutrinos are massless, they are degenerate so that any unitary transformed neutrino states can be taken as mass eigenstates. The unitary transformation can thus be taken as the identity matrix. Therefore significant lepton mixing via the charged weak current can never show up in any physical process.