Could information be expanding the universe?

[MirceaKitsune]

I often come across discussion about how and why the universe is expanding, and what causes the expansion to constantly accelerate. The view currently accepted by science is that dark matter and dark energy are causing this. Since I don't have proof or solid indication of another model, I of course can't speak against that. Still, I'm considering a different explanation, which feels at least plausible in my opinion. I was wondering if there are any similar views, and if anyone else looked at this possibility to a deeper extent. This is my idea:

 

As time goes on, atoms (and ultimately objects) around the universe experience more outcomes at the quantum scale. At least under the "many worlds" interpretation, this would mean that the universe has to store more information as time goes on. For example, if an electron can exist in multiple orbits at once around a nucleus, its state in each orbit must be defined somewhere. Now if under any circumstance a particle can gain extra quantum states (like an electron popping into an extra orbit) or from each quantum state the particle can fork into a new set of quantum states (fractaling toward infinity), it means that new information is being added. This is already a bit weird, since the idea could violate the "conservation of energy" principle... but I guess that's a different discussion.

 

What's interesting is that this new information must be stored somewhere and somehow within the fabric of reality, such as an extra dimension above time. And in case there's any truth to this, and quantum states are stored (per particle) above what we perceive as spacetime, one can speculate that the extra information adds to the fabric of reality and therefore expands it. From here it's easy to imagine that if you stretch an entity in one direction, it's likely that you affect the other directions as well... like how blowing air into a 3D bubble (regardless from which direction) will cause it to expand into all 3 directions.

 

So maybe, just maybe, this is why space is expanding? The extra information created by quantum physical phenomena must be getting stored somewhere... and by being stored, they could increase the universe's capacity to hold information, dragging spacetime outward in the process.

 

I went as far as considering that this is what might cause the illusion of time flowing. Maybe our perspective in time is stationary... but because time is being dragged by the expansion of the universe, we perceive this movement as animation. If this happens to be the case, a person that could live for millions of years would notice that time flows faster today that it did millions of years ago, due to the expansion having accelerated. And if the universe ever started contracting, we should experience time flowing in reverse.

 

Does this model make sense to anyone else, and how probable does it sound? Has anyone considered something like this as an alternative to the dark matter model?

[elfmotat]

How would you quantify this? How would you test it?

[andrewcellini]

what do you mean by information?

[Bignose]

Has anyone considered something like this as an alternative to the dark matter model?

It is at least an interesting idea. The questions above from the other posters do immediately come to mind, as in what is information and why must it be stored somewhere...

 

Also, to be considered a viable alternative, it needs to be able to recreate the dark matter maps we have right now. See, e.g., http://www.space.com/14176-dark-matter-biggest-map-unveiled.html

 

In short, you have a story, but it isn't very scientific yet. To make it scientific, you need to expand on it and see what predictions it creates and how closely those predictions agree with what we've observed (like that map linked above).

[MirceaKitsune]

I marked it as a speculation since there's of course no way to test it yet. It's simply "an idea that might make sense" for now.

 

By adding information, I mean that when a particle begins to exist in a new quantum state, a new version of that particle might be created. So the universe is in a sense storing more data.

 

I'm not sure if this is a realistic and correct example... but for instance: An electron is orbiting a nucleus, and leaps between two orbits. Something happens (like a photon hitting it) and we notice it now jumps between three orbits. This could mean that an extra state was created, and the particle is exists in an additional reality. This added information could be a factor that's expanding the fabric of the universe.