Could All the Internet Weigh Less Than a Strawberry?
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Mom asks Daniel a riddle. If you could put all the information on the internet on a scale -- every photo, video, message, and website -- how much would it weigh?
He says tons.
Some physicists have estimated it could weigh roughly as much as a strawberry. And the reason why is one of the most mind-bending things about how computers actually work.
Everything stored on a computer is ultimately represented as ones and zeros. Those ones and zeros have to be physically encoded somewhere inside the machine. In many kinds of memory, electrons help create the states that represent data. In others, it is magnetic orientation, or optical patterns, or voltage levels. What all of these have in common is that the physical states involved weigh almost nothing.
An electron weighs about nine times ten to the power of minus thirty-one kilograms. A number so small it is essentially beyond imagination.
In 2006, Harvard physicist Russell Seitz estimated the mass associated with the electrons involved in storing and moving information across the internet. His figure came out to roughly fifty grams -- about the weight of a strawberry. That estimate is contested. Different scientists using different methods and different definitions get very different numbers -- some far smaller, some larger. But whatever the precise calculation, the principle holds. The physical states encoding all that information weigh almost nothing.
Daniel asks whether downloading a movie makes his phone heavier. The answer is technically yes -- by an amount so small it would never be measurable on any scale that exists. The memory inside the phone changes state to store the movie. Changing those physical states changes the total mass by an unimaginably tiny amount. Nothing significant comes in from outside to add weight. The hardware was already there.
The library is heavy. The words inside it are not.
That line is Daniel's. And it is the best description of digital information in the episode.
What you will find in this episode:
- Why all the data on the internet is physically almost weightless
- How ones and zeros are encoded as physical states inside computers
- Russell Seitz's strawberry estimate -- and why scientists debate it
- Whether downloading a movie makes your phone heavier
- Why the servers and cables holding the internet weigh millions of tons while the information inside weighs almost nothing
- Daniel's closing line -- and Mom's response to it
Short, surprising, and the kind of episode that changes how you think about every piece of information you have ever sent or stored.
Listen, wonder, and learn.
Find us @smilewithDaniel everywhere.
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