Insights from Large-Scale Communications: Initiation

This paper offers an original theoretical framework to quantify the information content associated with cosmological structure formation. The formalism is developed and employed to study the spectrum of information underlying the galaxy distribution in the observable Universe. Using data from SDSS DR18 we further quantify the information sharing across different parts of the studied volume. An attempt to validate the assumption of cosmic homogeneity is made, which rules out the presence of a Universal scale of uniformity below 130 h⁻¹ Mpc. In addition, an analytical study is carried out to track back the evolution of global information content up to $z=20$, where a log-normal density distribution with redshift-dependent variance, skewness, and kurtosis is used to mimic the observable Universe. A staggering 8 × 10¹⁴⁴ TB of information loss is estimated, caused by the formation of large-scale structures in the present universe. We further illustrate how the global information budget is impacted at different epochs by the interaction between the expansion rate and growth rate of structure, taking the Λ CDM model into account. It is found that while the growth rate of the global information content is slowing down, information loss is increasing dramatically despite an ongoing accelerated expansion.