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I recently attended a talk by Dr. Ravi Gomatam on 'quantum reality', where the speaker suggested, that conservation of energy is not a fundamental law, and is conditional, but the conservation of information is fundamental. What exactly is the meaning of information? Can it be quantified? How is it related to energy?

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If one measures lack of information by the entropy (as usual in information theory), and equates it with the entropy in thermodynamics then the laws of thermodynamics say just the opposite: In an isolated system, energy is conserved wheras entropy can be created, i.e., information can get lost.

The main stream view in physics (aside from speculations about future physics not yet checkable by experiment) is that on the most fundamental level energy is conserved (being a consequence of the translation symmetry of the universe), while entropy is a concept of statistical mechnaics that is applicable only to macroscopic bodies and constitutes an approximation, though at the huma scale a very good one.

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What you have said, is just a statistical definition of information. Can physical information be defined is some other way ( a quantum mechanical definition?) – ramanujan_dirac Mar 8 '12 at 15:41
Information is a statistical concept, also in telecommunication engineering, say. It captures the scientific aspect of information, though not its subjective value for human beings. Maybe you can ask morespecifically after having read en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information – Arnold Neumaier Mar 8 '12 at 16:00
Ramanujan, do you happen to know any online links to explain what Dr Gomatam means by the assertion that conservation of energy (and I'll assume this really means mass-energy) is not fundamental? That alone is a very unusual assertion, so it's not clear exactly what he intended. I looked at his home page, but nothing looked promising based on the titles. – Terry Bollinger Mar 8 '12 at 23:41
@ramanujan : it would be interesting to know about the "conditions" at which the speaker says energy is conserved or for that matter not conserved. I have recently asked a similar question in physics.SE, and got an answer that conservation of energy is fundamental which comes from Noether's Theorem, basically because of symmetry in space-time. – Vineet Menon Mar 9 '12 at 5:52
@TerryHey, sorry if you have already seen this link. bvinst.edu/faculty/~gomatam.htm There is a link under lectures 'quantum reality - Why physicists dont understand it', it seems he gave the same lecture at my institute – ramanujan_dirac Mar 9 '12 at 12:11
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