Have you ever wondered how much does the entire internet weight? I mean, if we could, theoretically, put all the internet’s information on a scale, what would the indication be? It has to be a pretty huge figure, right?
Well, not exactly. By using some rough maths, Vsauce estimates that the entire internet weighs 50 grams, about the same as a large strawberry.
Using Albert Einstein’s famous E=mc² formula which states that energy and mass are directly related, Professor John Kubiatowicz, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, calculated that filling his 4GB Kindle to its storage limit would have increased its weight by 0.000000000000000001g (a billionth of a billionth of a gram). (the article continues after the ad)
By applying the same principle, we can calculate how much energy (thus mass) the internet requires in order to run. Here’s the full explanation:
However, the figures on this video are kind of outdated. For example, the estimate that there are between 75 to 100 million servers is a 2006 figure, not a 2016. In the 10 years that have past since then, there have been many more data centres and of course, server processors now run at higher clock-speeds.
But still, if not a strawberry, perhaps now it weights the same as an… egg? It still sounds fascinating to me!
If you like what you read, then you will definitely love this one: Seven People Are Responsible Of Restarting The Internet In Case Of Disaster
Source: Vsauce
Photo: Pexels
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