It From Bit: How Information Physics Explains the Day of Judgment

You think your choices disappear?

You speak a word, and it dissolves into air? You make a decision, and time buries it under new decisions? You commit an act in private, and you assume the universe forgets?

That’s not how things work.

Every choice you have ever made is still here. Encoded. Permanent. Written into the fabric of spacetime itself—waiting to manifest.

This isn’t theology dressed in scientific language. This is physics. And if you understand it, you will never make a careless choice again.

The Bit That Becomes Reality

In 1989, physicist John Archibald Wheeler proposed one of the most radical ideas in modern science. He called it “It from Bit.”

Wheeler argued that reality doesn’t exist independently and then gets measured. Reality emerges from information—from accumulated yes-or-no questions, binary choices, bits.

His exact words:

“Every it—every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself—derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes or no questions, binary choices, bits.”

In plain terms:

Every particle. Every force. Spacetime itself. All of it emerges from information. From bits.

The physical universe is not made of matter that happens to contain information. The physical universe is information that has manifested into matter.

Wheeler demonstrated this through black hole entropy. The surface area of a black hole’s horizon tells you exactly how many bits of information are trapped inside. The more information hidden, the more mass observed. Information and mass are directly related.

This means: Every “it” you will ever encounter was once a “bit.”

Every physical thing that exists began as encoded information.

Now apply this to yourself.

You Are Writing Code Into Reality

Every choice you make is a bit.

Did you pray Fajr this morning? Yes or no. One bit.

Did you speak the truth when lying would have been easier? Yes or no. One bit.

Did you give when you could have kept? Did you forgive when you could have retaliated? Did you lower your gaze when you could have looked?

Yes or no. Yes or no. Yes or no.

Bits. Accumulating. Encoding into the fabric of existence.

You are not making decisions that vanish into the past. You are writing permanent code into spacetime. Every action leaves an imprint that cannot be erased, cannot be deleted, cannot be forgotten.

The Quran told us this fourteen centuries ago:

وَكُلَّ شَىْءٍ أَحْصَيْنَـٰهُ فِىٓ إِمَامٍ مُّبِينٍ

“And all things We have enumerated in a clear register.” — Surah Ya-Sin (36:12)

A clear register. Every action recorded. Nothing lost.

This is not metaphor. This is the physics of accountability.

Hasanat: The Pixels of Reality

In Islamic understanding, every deed carries weight. The smallest unit of positive contribution is called a hasana—a single good deed.

Think of hasanat as pixels.

Every positive action you take adds pixels of ordered information into the universe. Some actions contribute a few pixels. Others contribute millions. The magnitude depends on the action itself, its ripple effects, and—crucially—the intention behind it.

A smile in someone’s face is a hasana. Giving charity is a hasana. But the informational density differs. A small act of kindness encodes a certain amount of ordered information. An act of charity that feeds a hundred families encodes vastly more.

And here is where intention becomes decisive.

Intention: The Encoder

The same external action can encode completely different information.

Two people give charity. Same amount. Same recipients. One gives to be seen. One gives seeking only Allah.

The external action is identical. But the intention determines the sign of the encoding—positive or negative. The person giving for show has encoded a sayyi’a (evil deed), not a hasana. Same external act. Opposite informational reality.

This is why the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) said actions are judged according to intentions. Intention is the encoder that determines what gets written into spacetime.

Good Deeds as Order, Evil as Entropy

Here is where physics becomes theology—and theology becomes physics.

Good deeds contribute order to the universe. They add structured, meaningful information. They are creative energy that sustains existence itself.

Evil contributes entropy. Chaos. Disorder. It degrades the informational structure of reality.

The Quran makes this explicit:

ظَهَرَ ٱلْفَسَادُ فِى ٱلْبَرِّ وَٱلْبَحْرِ بِمَا كَسَبَتْ أَيْدِى ٱلنَّاسِ

“Corruption has appeared on land and sea because of what the hands of people have earned.” — Surah Ar-Rum (30:41)

This is not poetic language. This is cause and effect.

Negative human behavior doesn’t just harm individuals. It increases entropy in the system. It degrades the ordered structure of creation. Corruption literally appears—in the land, in the sea, in the fabric of existence—because disordered information is being encoded.

And conversely: when you pray, when you give, when you serve, when you honor your parents, when you speak truth—you are channeling divine order into the world. You are adding the structured information that keeps the universe running.

Good deeds are the fuel of existence.

This is why you were created. Not to be tested and discarded. Not to be sorted into reward and punishment like products on a factory line. You were created to contribute ordered information to a universe that requires it.

You are a khalifa—a steward, a representative—whose choices participate in cosmic maintenance.

The Physics of Accountability

People ask the wrong question.

They say: “Why did God create us if He’s going to put us in Hell?”

This question assumes a negative divine intention. It imagines a God who creates beings specifically to torment them. It misunderstands everything.

Consider gravity.

God established the law of gravity. He did not create it to kill you. He created it to make physical existence possible—to hold planets in orbit, to give your body weight, to let water flow downhill.

But if you climb to your apartment on the tenth floor and throw yourself off, gravity will kill you.

You cannot fall to your death and then cry: “Why did God create gravity if it was going to kill me?”

God created a physical law. You chose to violate its parameters. The consequence followed.

Accountability works the same way. It’s physics.

God established a physics of information. Every action you take encodes a bit into spacetime. Positive intentions encode order. Negative intentions encode chaos. This information accumulates throughout your life. And when the conditions are right, it will manifest—transform from bits into its.

This is not a threat. This is information about how reality operates.

The Quran is not warning you to scare you. It is informing you of a law as real as gravity:

فَمَن يَعْمَلْ مِثْقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ خَيْرًا يَرَهُۥ ۝ وَمَن يَعْمَلْ مِثْقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ شَرًّا يَرَهُۥ

“Whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it. And whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it.” — Surah Az-Zalzalah (99:7-8)

An atom’s weight. The smallest possible unit of action. Even that is encoded. Even that will manifest, even that you will see.

Not because God is vengeful. Because this is how information physics works.

You may be sitting in your high-rise apartment right now. You can spend your time encoding order—contributing to the mission you were created for. Or you can throw yourself from the tenth floor and blame the law that breaks you.

The choice is being recorded as you read this.

The Day of Manifestation

If every action encodes information into spacetime, and every bit eventually becomes an it—then there must come a moment of manifestation from information to reality.

That moment is the Day of Judgment.

Several physicists, including Nassim Haramein, have proposed that our universe exists within a black hole. This is not metaphor—it is a serious cosmological hypothesis. If true, our cosmos is a bounded system with finite informational capacity, expanding outward from a singularity.

Here is what physics tells us about the fate of black holes: they do not last forever. Through a process called Hawking radiation, black holes slowly emit energy. As they emit, they lose mass. As they lose mass, they emit faster—the rate of radiation increases exponentially. Eventually, the black hole reaches a critical point where it can no longer maintain its structure. The final stage is a violent burst of energy—a cataclysmic transformation in which all the stored information is released.

This is the key: information cannot be destroyed. This is a fundamental law of physics. Whatever is encoded in a black hole must eventually be released when that black hole transforms. The bits must become its.

If we exist within a cosmic black hole, then our universe is accumulating information—every choice, every action, every deed encoded into the fabric of spacetime. When this cosmic structure reaches its limit, when it can no longer contain the accumulated information, it will transform. And in that transformation, everything hidden will be released. Every bit will manifest into its full reality.

The Quran describes this moment:

يَوْمَئِذٍ تُحَدِّثُ أَخْبَارَهَا ۝ بِأَنَّ رَبَّكَ أَوْحَىٰ لَهَا

“That Day, it will report its news—because your Lord has inspired it.” — Surah Az-Zalzalah (99:4-5)

The earth will speak. Not metaphorically. The medium that stored the information will read it out.

The energy and information that was stored will rearrange itself into new realms. Paradise and Hell are not arbitrary destinations—they are where the ordered information and the disordered information separate and manifest. The physics of those realms will be different, as we explored in the previous article on Hoyle’s continuous creation. But the information that determines where you go? That is being written now. In this realm. By your choices.

On that Day, the storage medium testifies. The bits manifest into their full reality.

The Scales Are Literal

The Quran speaks of scales on the Day of Judgment. Heavy scales and light scales.

فَأَمَّا مَن ثَقُلَتْ مَوَٰزِينُهُۥ ۝ فَهُوَ فِى عِيشَةٍ رَّاضِيَةٍ ۝ وَأَمَّا مَنْ خَفَّتْ مَوَٰزِينُهُۥ ۝ فَأُمُّهُۥ هَاوِيَةٌ

“As for one whose scales are heavy—he will be in a pleasant life. But as for one whose scales are light—his refuge will be the Abyss.” — Surah Al-Qari’ah (101:6-9)

If Wheeler is right—if information relates directly to mass—then this language is not symbolic.

Good deeds carry ordered information. They are structured, meaningful, and creative. They contribute to the sustenance of existence—fuel that keeps the universe running. When this information manifests, it has substance. It is dense with meaning. It weighs heavily on the scales.

Evil deeds carry disordered information. They are entropy—chaos encoded into the fabric of reality. They do not build; they degrade. When this information manifests, it does not simply disappear. It manifests as exactly what it is: corruption, disorder, decay.

The scales are measuring something real: the quality of information a life encoded.

A life spent contributing order—prayers that maintained connection to the divine, charity that sustained others, truthfulness that preserved social fabric, service that built rather than destroyed—this life encoded dense, structured, meaningful information. On the scales, it weighs heavy.

A life spent contributing entropy—lies that eroded trust, harm that broke relationships, corruption that degraded systems, sins disguised as piety—this life encoded disorder. The information exists. It is fully recorded. But it is chaos, not structure. On the scales, structure weighs more than chaos. Order weighs more than entropy.

The person with light scales did not fail to act. They acted. They encoded constantly. But they encoded disorder—and disorder, when manifested, reveals itself as empty of the substance that sustains.

You Participate in Cosmic Timing

Here is the final implication—and it is staggering.

If good deeds contribute order and evil contributes entropy, then the collective output of humanity affects the system itself.

The more order we contribute, the more the universe can sustain. The more entropy we generate, the faster the system degrades toward its transformation point.

This is what it means to be a vicegerent (khalifa).

You are not a passive observer waiting for a predetermined date. You are an active participant in cosmic maintenance. Your choices—aggregated with the choices of every human who has ever lived—influence the very timing of existence.

The Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) told us that the Day of Judgment will come only upon the worst of people—when corruption has become total, when no one remains to say “Allah, Allah.”

وَقَدِمْنَآ إِلَىٰ مَا عَمِلُوا۟ مِنْ عَمَلٍۢ فَجَعَلْنَـٰهُ هَبَآءًۭ مَّنثُورًا

And We will approach [i.e., regard] what they have done of deeds and make them as dust dispersed.

— Surah Al-Furqan (25:23)

This is not arbitrary. If humanity generates only entropy, the system cannot sustain. The transformation into the day of judgement accelerates. The bits demand manifestation.

God retains ultimate control. He alone knows the Hour. But He created a physics in which your participation matters. Your single hasana contributes to the order that sustains worlds.

The Choice You Are Making Now

Every moment from this point forward is an opportunity to encode order. To add structured information. To contribute hasanat so dense with meaning that they will manifest heavily on the scales.

The physics is clear. The law is operational. You are sitting in the apartment, and you experience what to do next.

You can throw yourself from the tenth floor and blame the gravity.

Or you can spend the time you have left writing code that will sustain you forever.

The fabric of space is recording.

And every atom’s weight—every single bit—will become an it.

Good deed or bad deed? Entropy or Order?

What will you encode next?

All Quranic translations are carefully adapted for clarity while maintaining fidelity to the Arabic text. Readers are encouraged to refer to the original Arabic for deeper study.

Peace,
Amer Sakr, Ph.D.