Physics of Information

Dear Colleagues,

Information has enabled new interpretations of quantum phenomena that promise fresh theoretical and practical insights. It also lies at the heart of statistical mechanics. Longstanding paradoxes in thermodynamics have been solved (or raised) using information and computation. In cosmology, it has been suggested that the universe has an unexpectedly limited capacity to store and process information, perhaps indicating that space and time are not fundamental properties of reality. Paradoxically, physics seems to impose constraints on information, such as the speed at which it can travel from one region to another in or how much information we can extract from a physical event at the smallest scale. Focusing on information flow, it has also been suggested, will also help us better understand how cells and complex biological organisms work. Indeed these days molecular biology is mostly an information science.

But it is computer science that has placed information at the center of the modern debate. Digital information has dominated technology in the half century, empowering and extending human capabilities to new frontiers. How unreasonable is the effectiveness of digital computation in the natural sciences? Is computation the obvious description of information-processing? What are the connections between carrying information, programming artificial and natural systems and computation? What is the nature of the interplay between information, entropy and other complexity measures?

This special issue is devoted to all these questions as approached through rigorous and unpublished technical work from areas such as cosmology, astrophysics, mathematics, computer science, complexity science, biology, and neuroscience. The central topic for authors to bear in mind is some foundational aspect of information and reality, or information processing in nature.

Dr. Hector Zenil
Dr. Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Information is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.