The whole internet 'weighs the same as a strawberry'


UPDATED: 12:28 EST, 4 November 2011

 

The entire internet weighs as much as a strawberry, calculates YouTube science show Vsauce. But if you're only counting the data, not the electricity required to make it work, the whole lot weighs far far less

The entire internet weighs as much as a strawberry, calculates YouTube science show Vsauce. But if you're only counting the data, not the electricity required to make it work, the whole lot weighs far far less

A mathematician recently calculated that eBook readers 'gain weight' when you add new books to your library - due to the energy 'gained' by electrons when they store information, and the weight of that energy.

Filling a Kindle with books causes it to gain an infinitesimally small amount of mass - so small that it gains 100,000,000 times more when you recharge the battery.

Now a YouTube science channel has used the same mathematics to calculate the mass of the entire internet.

Surprisingly, the whole thing weighs just 50g - around the weight of a single (large) strawberry.

 

More...

But the actual information in it weighs less than a speck of dust.

WHY DOES INFORMATION WEIGH ANYTHING?

 The calculations use Einstein's famous E=MC squared formula, which relates energy to mass.

Electrons which 'store' data in a device have higher energy than electrons which don't - therefore the device weighs more.

The difference in weight in gadgets full of information and 'empty' gadgets is far less than the difference produced by charging the battery, or wiping dust off the screen.

Prof Kubiatowicz's findings about Kindles 'gaining weight' are based on the fact that, while downloading an e-book does not change the number of electrons in an e-reader, those electrons holding data have a higher level of energy.

The relationship between energy and mass - famously summarised by Einstein as E=mc2 - means that those with a higher energy also have a higher mass.

Vsauce says that the 50g figure is the weight of all the electrons in the electricity required to make the internet work - assuming 75-100 million servers supporting the internet, and not including the home PCs running it.

The whole lot equates to around 40billion watts - which weighs in around the same as a plump strawberry.

If you include all the home PCs using the net, the figure is roughly three strawberries.

The weight if you're just counting the data stored in the internet is much less.

It's difficult to quantify how much data there is in the internet - Vsauce used a (dated) estimate by Google's Eric Schmidt.

Schmidt guessed that there were 5,000,000 terabytes of information in the internet - of which Google indexed 0.04 per cent.

The entire weight of that information would work out, Vsauce estimates, to 0.02 millionths of an ounce.


 

Comments (31)

The comments below have not been moderated.

 View all

And there's me thinking such research would be fruitless.

Click to rate     Rating   64

Report abuse

And because I wrote this comment and the DM published it, the Internet now weighs as much as 1.00000000000000000000000000000000001 large strawberries

Click to rate     Rating   26

Report abuse

"pity the geeks can't find a way to cut our over populated planet, before its too late." Strictly enforced population control where only those who can afford to raise children to sufficient standards are allowed to have children and limiting families to one or two children FULL STOP, allowing euthanasia, eugenic-based abortion of children born with birth defects, abandoning the 3rd world to its droughty superheated disease infested death... That's just a few suggestions from the top of my geeky head THAT WOULD WORK. Show me a people wiling to accept those sacrifices in order to help heal this planet. China comes close, from what I understand, but that gets criticised for its 'Human Rights violations'. Show me a western government willing and able to put this into practise AND ENFORCE IT. There are many ways to solve these problems before it's too late. Unfortunately no one will until too late has been and gone. Sucks, doesn't it, but there we are.

Click to rate     Rating   14

Report abuse

Which internet is this then? The one I'm aware of weighs heavy on my shoulders sometimes.

Click to rate     Rating   9

Report abuse

Are they calculating it like this: E = mc^2 or Energy = mass x (speed of light)^2, so I guess they are rearraging to m = E / c2 to calculate the mass of the energy needed to produce the amount of data of the internet. But as neutrinos have recently discovered to go faster than light maybe we could argue that the equation is E = m (c + X)2 with the constant X being a fudge factor of whatever excess speed faster than light they calculated at CERN.

Click to rate     Rating   14

Report abuse

pity the geeks can't find a way to cut our over populated planet, before its too late.

Click to rate     Rating   32

Report abuse

How much does the entire knowledge of God weigh? - Dr Teddy Robbear, Scotland, 3/11/2011 Well, our only written 'knowledge' of God or 'evidence' comes from the bible. So, considering that the internet weighs as much as a strawberry, you have to conclude that it weighs an obscene amount less than a strawberry. Unless you're actually talking about God... in which case, how much does an invisible friend weigh? I guess you could conclude he weighs about as much as the electrons in your brain used to create him. Again.... an awful lot less than a strawberry.

Click to rate     Rating   3

Report abuse

How much does the entire knowledge of God weigh? - Dr Teddy Robbear, Scotland, 3/11/2011 17:09 --------------------------------- Which particular god are you referring to, according to the various mythology's from around the world some are smarter than others and is there some scale by which to convert from Theobytes to Megabytes?

Click to rate     Rating   8

Report abuse

It's a good thing scientists have computers then, otherwise they'd be trying to convince us that the internet didn't exist and was a delusion and all in the mind.

Click to rate     Rating   18

Report abuse

So basically all these so called friends on Farcebook, fit in one strawberry. That sounds about right.

Click to rate     Rating   14

Report abuse

The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

We are no longer accepting comments on this article.