Physicists are increasingly leaning toward the idea that the universe consists not of particles or energy, but of something even more fundamental: pure information.
A recent paper by researcher Geoffrey Hanley has resonated deeply within the theoretical physics community, all thanks to one deceptively simple assertion: the universe does not contain information—it is made of it. Hanley demonstrates that the most fundamental equations of physics—quantum mechanics, Einsteinian gravity, and thermodynamics—are not merely separate laws governing different phenomena, but rather expressions of a single underlying principle: information evolving along the path of least resistance.
Under this framework, space is not an empty container for events, but a form carved out by the very movement of information. Matter itself—particles, forces, and mass—emerges when information achieves a stable geometry and becomes anchored within it. In Hanley’s interpretation, the universe appears not as a collection of static objects, but as a continuous process of becoming. His concept provides specific, experimentally testable hypotheses: the geometry of quantum systems can be measured directly via their informational structure; the mathematical framework of physics can evaluate the coherence of artificial intelligence; and finally, even conscious thought may leave detectable geometric signatures.
Hanley’s findings find powerful corroboration in the work of Tadashi Takayanagi, one of the world’s most renowned theoretical physicists and a co-author of the formula that revolutionized our understanding of the link between gravity and quantum mechanics. In his landmark essay, Takayanagi explicitly argues that gravitational spacetime—the very fabric of the universe—arises from quantum information. Specifically, it stems from the entanglement of invisible quantum threads that link particles that once interacted, holding them together across any distance. When a sufficient number of entangled quantum bits are woven together, they generate geometry. This geometry, in turn, manifests as space. Space, stirred by quantum energy, eventually crystallizes into the particles and forces that we perceive as physical reality.
The central open question, Takayanagi writes, is no longer whether this is true, but exactly how it unfolds at every scale.
Taken together, these two bodies of work point toward something that would have seemed unthinkable in a scientific paper only decades ago. For a century, physics has searched for the fundamental constituents of the universe. The answer now emerging from its own cutting-edge frontiers is that the universe is not made "of something"—it is, in itself, a form. Information does not exist within reality; rather, reality is what information becomes when it is embodied. Particles, forces, and the vast distances between stars are nothing more than the universe's information assuming its most stable configuration. And we are not mere observers of this process. We are part of it: informational patterns that have briefly achieved coherence to look back at the very field from which they emerged.
