# Does information have mass?

So this is a question I've been thinking about a lot lately.  Due to [this experiment](https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0087175) that is going to attempt to measure the excess mass released from a carefully contained matter/anti-matter annihilation event.  Or at least this is the proposal to measure the mass of information.  The paper makes a case for information as a fifth state of matter, but I'm not exactly sure that is what it will prove at all.  When I think of the outcome of a discovery such as information does indeed have mass, I think more along the lines of "Is this the most fundamental building block of matter?"

I do this a lot.  Speculate and let ideas and possibilities unfold in my mind.  It may be metaphysics, but I enjoy it.

Such as does this lend credence to the idea of the universe as a simulation?  Maybe, or maybe information is just a fundamental building block of everything.  Sort of harking back to the neo-hermetic ideology of the all of the universe is mind.  That information in a fundamental state is what everything is? What will a successful experiment like this prove, that the [logoi](https://www.britannica.com/topic/logos) has been found objectively and it's really really small and strange?

Is information going to be classified with the [massless particles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massless_particle) or is it going to be even stranger like the [completely hypothetical particles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon)?  I don't know, and I kind of like not knowing or really even having a good grasp of what reaching such a measurement might mean.

As I read the proposal paper it seems like a result of one extra photon means we might have a measurement of information and mass can be derived from that result.  Does this indicate a new state of matter or something more fundamental than that?  I don't know, but I hope someone finds out.