Time, Space, Energy & Information
Signal propagation and the physics of communication
Missing dimensions: Matter, Observer
Overview
This quadruplet describes the physics of communication in its purest form: information propagating through spacetime on energetic carriers. Electromagnetic waves carry information across cosmic distances; gravitational waves encode the informational signatures of colliding black holes; the cosmic microwave background is an energetic signal carrying information from the first moments of the universe. Without matter or observer, this is the universe as a pure signal network.
Central Tension
The tension is between the energetic cost of sending information across spacetime and the theoretical limits on communication bandwidth. Shannon's theorem sets information-theoretic limits; relativity sets speed limits; thermodynamics sets energy-cost limits. These three constraints together define the fundamental physics of communication — and the question is whether they can be circumvented by quantum effects, or whether they represent absolute boundaries on the flow of information through spacetime.
Key Philosophical Questions
- Are Shannon limits, the speed of light, and thermodynamic costs the ultimate constraints on information flow through spacetime?
- Could quantum communication (teleportation, entanglement) bypass classical limits on spatiotemporal information transfer?
- Is spacetime itself an information channel, or merely the medium through which energetic signals propagate?
- Does the expanding universe create an increasing loss of accessible information, as more spacetime falls beyond the cosmic horizon?
Schools of Thought
Information propagation through spacetime is governed by physical law: electromagnetism, relativity, and thermodynamics set absolute limits on communication.
Quantum entanglement creates non-local correlations in spacetime that challenge classical communication limits, though no faster-than-light signaling is possible.
Spacetime is the network, energy is the bandwidth, and information is the traffic; the universe is an optimized communication system running on a computational substrate.
Information flow through energetic spacetime is the fundamental process of reality; the laws of physics are information-processing constraints.
God's Word pervades all spacetime with unlimited energetic reach; divine communication is not constrained by light cones or thermodynamic costs.
Synthesis
Time, space, energy, and information together describe the universe as a communication network: signals propagating at finite speed, carrying information at finite bandwidth, at finite energetic cost. This is the physicist's universe minus matter and minus the observer — a pure signal space governed by Shannon, Einstein, and Boltzmann.
Related Dimension Triplets