Where is the information stored?

[Alex K]

Imagine completely empty space. Now in that space place two electrons. Smash those electrons together hard enough and you get a shower of other particles....including protons. This suggests the information necessary to construct a proton is contained in the electron. Continue to smash particles together and conceivably you can have an entire universe....just like ours. Does the information necessary to construct a universe just like our exists in just two electrons? If it doesn't where does this information exist?

Good question. Our current description of fundamental physics via Quantum Field Theory has a very Platonesque flavor: there is a set of fields which serve as templates for the kinds of particles you can have, almost like a stencil.
Then there's a set of interaction rules for these fields. Even completely empty space has these rules underlying it. Even if there are no two electrons, the structure of the vacuum contains all possible particles and interactions in the form of virtual particles, governed by these rules.


When you let two electrons enter the game, you more or less give these virtual guys energy to become real particles. So I don't think it is entirely accurate to say that this information is "in the electrons".