WHY THERE MUST BE SOMETHING: INFORMATION, STATES, AND THE LOGICAL NECESSITY OF EXISTENCE

We resolve the fundamental question of metaphysics—"Why is there something rather than nothing?"—through information theory and spacetime dynamics. Drawing on Landauer's (1961) principle that information is physical, we demonstrate that "nothing" is logically incoherent. Any state, including the hypothetical absence of all states, constitutes information. Furthermore, the very concept of a physical state requires the temporal reference frames governed by general relativity. Therefore, "nothing" would itself be "something" dependent on a relativistic spacetime structure, creating a fatal contradiction. We conclude that existence is not contingent but necessary: the universe exists because non-existence is impossible. This reframes cosmological questions by eliminating the need for a first cause and establishing existence as a logical requirement rather than a contingent fact requiring explanation. Additionally, we show that since information requires energy to be encoded and processed—and energy and mass are equivalent via E = mc²—information can be regarded as a form of mass. This physical weight reinforces the idea that even the simplest distinctions carry measurable consequences in spacetime. Moreover, singularities in general relativity, where classical definiteness breaks down, may be understood not as endpoints but as transitions back into quantum superposition—a more fundamental informational state. Thus, singularities reintegrate into the broader fabric of information processing.