gasutbyte

Gasutbyte is a fictional unit of information used in speculative discussions of gas-scale simulations and in some science fiction contexts. It denotes the amount of information required to describe the state of a gas at a given level of detail, blending concepts from thermodynamics and information theory. The term is not an established scientific unit and has no standardized definition. When used, the value of a gasutbyte is deliberately context-dependent, varying with the chosen model resolution, such as whether a gas is described by macroscopic properties like temperature and pressure or by microscopic microstates of individual molecules.

In thought experiments, gasutbyte is often linked to questions about the energy cost of information processing in molecular systems, invoking principles related to the thermodynamic cost of information. It can be employed to illustrate how increasing model fidelity raises informational and energetic requirements in simulations of gaseous systems.

Gasutbyte has appeared primarily in educational writings, speculative essays, and some works of fiction to discuss the relationship between information and physical states. It has not been adopted by any scientific discipline as a standard unit, and real measurements rely on established thermodynamic and informational quantities.

See also information theory, Landauer’s principle, statistical mechanics, molecular simulation.