From observations, we know that spacetime distorts in the presence of mass. In a relation interpretation, this is precisely what one would expect. In a completely neutral field (see chapter 5) without any connections to complexity, the probability, and thus the speed, of information exchange is maximum and uniform everywhere. However, when there are relations with more complex structures through neighbors and neighbors of neighbors, the number of possibilities – and consequently the speed – of exchanges decreases. As the distance to a complex system decreases, and/or the level of complexity increases, the exchange slows down. Spacetime continues to deform increasingly. At the event horizon of a black hole, this deceleration reaches a boundary.

Black hole
Light – electromagnetic radiation – and stars moving past a black hole are deflected, sometimes so intensely that they are drawn into the hole. Because in close proximity of black holes spacetime continues to vanish between two systems with complexity. Hence, a star can be engulfed by a black hole. However, no complex systems emerge from it. Even for photons there are too few options for exchange to escape a black hole. So, no electromagnetic radiation in the form of photons superposed on the neutral field emerges. Spacetime, however, can leak outward. This information is added to the neutral field outside the event horizon. Spacetime information always escapes from a more complex environment. This escaping information might be what is referred to as the theoretical concept of Hawking radiation.

When we consider spacetime as physical information – as we do – the black hole information paradox is also resolved with this perspective.

Gravitational waves
By focusing on relations, gravitational waves are the fluctuations in spacetime information that are redistributed through neighbors and neighbors of neighbors in the neutral field, which is, as we’ve seen in chapter 5, not entirely neutral. This redistribution of information with the environment appears to macroscopic beings as the propagation of gravitational waves.

The holographic principle
Physicists Gerard ‘t Hooft and Leonard Susskind introduced the holographic principle. This concept is a mathematical description of how all the information of a black hole fits on the surface of that black hole, much like a hologram. Interestingly, not only black holes, but even the entire universe, surrounded by an imaginary shell of information, can be regarded as a hologram. The holographic principle concerns how a three-dimensional space is described by information on a two-dimensional surface.

Our thought experiment does not involve rigid degrees of freedom. In a relation view, isolation and independence do not exist; therefore, neither do fully independent parameters. All information is interconnected and interchangeable. This applies to spatial dimensions and time as well. Three spatial dimensions can effortlessly merge into two. The amount of information remains the same, of course, because the no-hiding theorem is always in effect. It depends on the perspective – one could also say: on the entanglement or relation – of the observer whether they see a three-dimensional space or a two-dimensional surface. The aspects of dimension exchange and the relation with the observer recur several times in our book. This occurs, for example, when discussing Feynman diagrams, the construction of neutrons and protons, and, consequently, the strong force and QCD (Section 6.17), the weak force (Section 6.18), and in the section on symmetry and chirality (6.25). Particularly in this latter section, everything falls into place.

Similar like our assumption that a quark is only a quark due to the composition of its environment, and the relation with its observer, the holographic principle can be understood as the observer’s perspective.

Cosmological constant
One could even speculate about how all the information of the universe is represented in any arbitrary point of it. This reflects the statement of the Persian philosopher Rumi, who said: “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the whole ocean in a drop.” Such a consideration, however, is even more difficult to calculate than the holographic principle of ‘t Hooft and Susskind. Or perhaps this concerns the cosmological constant, which indicates the average relation between the smallest possible form of information and the information of the universe as a whole? The average relation, because information concerns probability distributions, of course. Although that hardly matters with this constant. It’s an insane number.