Imagine falling into a black hole. According to Einstein, you're done for: information is lost forever. According to quantum mechanics, impossible: information is never destroyed. For a century, these two pillars of physics have stared at each other like boxers before a fight. Now a team of physicists from Leiden University has proposed an elegant solution: Spacetime is not smooth. It is made of tiny "cells" that record every event.A bit like pixels on a screen, but at the Planck scale. Every passing particle leaves an imprint. Every force modifies the local quantum state. The result? The universe doesn't just evolve. Remember. And it's a cyclical universe.
Quantum Cells: Spacetime as a Hard Drive
The framework is called Quantum Memory Matrix (QMM). Quantum Memory Matrix. Published in the magazine Entropy, starts from a rather clear idea: treat information as the fundamental ingredient of reality. Not matter, not energy, not even spacetime itself. The informationSpacetime, according to QMM, is divided into tiny cells. Each cell can store a "quantum fingerprint" of what happens within it: the passage of a particle, the influence of an electromagnetic force, even nuclear interactions.
Florian Neukart, lead author of the study affiliated withLeiden University and Terra Quantum AG, explains that this structure resolves disagreements that have plagued quantum field theory for decades. Each cell has a finite number of degrees of freedom. It cannot contain infinite information. And this seemingly limiting constraint turns out to be a mathematical blessing.
The QMM introduces what is called a fingerprint operator, a reversible mathematical rule that allows information to be written and read in space-time cells. Tests conducted on IBM quantum processors they have demonstrated that this mechanism works: as I will tell you better later, quantum states are stored and retrieved with more than 90% accuracy.
The Black Hole Paradox Solved
The starting point was precisely him: the black hole information paradoxWhen matter falls into a black hole, according to general relativity, it disappears beyond the event horizon. According to quantum mechanics, this is forbidden: information must be preserved. For decades, physicists have searched for a way out. Some have hypothesized that information is encoded on the surface of the horizon (the holographic principle). Others have theorized quantum "firewalls" or exotic wormholes.
The QMM offers a more direct alternative. As matter falls, the surrounding space-time cells record its imprint. When the black hole evaporates via Hawking radiation, the information is not lost: it is already written in spacetime. The mechanism is mathematically captured by the imprint operator, which guarantees reversibility. No firewall, no exoticismsOnly unitary, local, and causal physics.
Dark matter and dark energy: just fingerprints?
At some point, the researchers went further. If the framework works for gravity, why not apply it to other forces? In a study published in February 2025, always on Entropy, the team extended QMM to strong and weak nuclear interactions. These forces also leave traces in spacetime cells. Then came electromagnetism. The result is a more general principle, dubbed geometry-information duality: The shape of spacetime depends not only on mass and energy, but also on how quantum information is distributed, especially through entanglement.
This change of perspective has dramatic consequences. In a study currently under review, researchers have discovered that aggregates of quantum fingerprints behave exactly like dark matterThey cluster under the gravitational effect and explain the anomalous motion of galaxies, which orbit faster than expected, without the need for exotic particles.
Dark matter wouldn't be matter. It would be information stored in spacetime.
And thedark energy? This also emerges from the model. When spacetime cells become saturated, they can no longer record new independent information. Instead, they contribute to a residual energy of spacetime. This contribution has the same mathematical form as the cosmological constant, the dark energy that is accelerating the expansion of the universe. The size predicted by the QMM matches the observed values. Two sides of the same informational coin.
Cyclic Universe: Three Already Passed, Less Than Ten Remaining
If spacetime has finite memory, what happens when it fills up? The team's latest cosmological study, accepted for publication in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, aims as mentioned at a cyclical universeEach cycle of expansion and contraction deposits entropy into the cells. When the limit is reached, the universe "bounces" into a new cycle. A bit like the Big Bounce theorized by Roger Penrose with his conformal cyclic cosmology, but with a different physical mechanism.
Reaching the limit means that the informational capacity (entropy) of spacetime is exhausted. At that point, the contraction cannot continue continuously. So what happens next? The equations show that, instead of collapsing into a singularity, the accumulated entropy triggers a reversal: a new phase of expansion. This is the "rebound." Comparing the model with observational data, the researchers estimate that the universe has already passed through three or four cycles, with fewer than ten still possible. After the last cycle, information capacity will be completely saturated. No more rebounds. Just a final, slowed-down expansion.
The true “information age” of the cosmos would be approximately 62 billion years, not the 13,8 billion years of its current expansion alone. The universe has a longer history than we thought. And a shorter future.
Quantum Computer Testing: From the Cosmos to the Lab
So far, it may seem like pure theory. But the team has already tested parts of QMM on real quantum computers. They've covered the quibit (the basic units of quantum computers) as tiny spacetime cells. Using imprinting and recovery protocols based on the QMM equations, they recovered original quantum states with over 90% accuracy. This proves two things. First, the imprint operator works on real quantum systems. Second, it has practical benefits. Combining imprinting with conventional error-correcting codes, have significantly reduced logical errors.
In short: the quantum memory array could not only explain the cosmos, but also help us build better quantum computers. Not bad for a theory born from studying black holes.
A cyclical universe made of memory and computation
QMM reframes the universe as a cosmic data bank and a quantum computer. Every event, every force, every particle leaves a mark that shapes the evolution of the cosmos. It connects some of the deepest problems in physics: from the information paradox to dark matter, from dark energy to cosmic cycles, from the arrow of time to the very origin of the universe. And it does so in a way that can already be tested today, in the laboratory.
Whether QMM is the final word or a stepping stone to something else opens up a disturbing possibility: The universe may not be just geometry and energy. It is also memory.And in that memory, every moment of cosmic history could still be written. Somewhere, in cells as large as the Planck length, there is a trace of the first instant after the Big Bounce. And perhaps even the one before.
As long as it lasts. Because after less than ten cycles, the memory will be full. And the cyclical universe will simply stop bouncing.
