The whole internet 'weighs the same as a strawberry'

Amazing. Can they really weigh the internet?

Well, according to this report they can:

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

This is how they they first came about with the theory:-

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.

However, I think this is where it falls apart

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.

It's the assuming part for me. When you undertake a scientific study, you would think assumptions should stay unreported. Or is it just me?

ETA:- Link (D'oh)

www.dailymail.co.uk...

When you assume you make an a$s of you and me
My boss tells me this quite often

reply to post by Vardoger


lol my teacher told me this so much back in middle school

reply to post by Cobaltic1978


And most of that weight is porn...

Why do you assume this is a scientific study? It's a back-of-the-envelope order-of-magnitude calculation and doesn't pretend to be otherwise.

If there are 5 million terabytes that consist of the internet and an electron weighs 9x10^-34 of a gram, then 4.94x10^-15 of a gram should be the the weight of that many electrons that charge the bits, but I'm guessing approx. half of those bits don't have a charge to them, because they are 0 instead of 1, so half of the weight is 2.47x10^-15 of a gram

Good chance I'm wrong, but that's how I worked it out.

Originally posted by repressed
Why do you assume this is a scientific study? It's a back-of-the-envelope order-of-magnitude calculation and doesn't pretend to be otherwise.

Okay, so when a mathmatician becomes involved is it not a scientific study, it is a mathmatical study?

Seriously though, it doesn't fit.

As for making an ass of u and me, lol. I was told this when I was boy, that's when I decided that assumptions are not welcome!!

Originally posted by TsukiLunar
reply to post by Cobaltic1978

 

And most of that weight is porn...

Covered in spam.

Originally posted by satron
If there are 5 million terabytes that consist of the internet and an electron weighs 9x10^-34 of a gram, then 4.94x10^-15 of a gram should be the the weight of that many electrons that charge the bits, but I'm guessing approx. half of those bits don't have a charge to them, because they are 0 instead of 1, so half of the weight is 2.47x10^-15 of a gram

Good chance I'm wrong, but that's how I worked it out.

edit on 4-11-2011 by satron because: (no reason given)

I think that 5 M terabyte is much too low. Depending of what's your definition of the internet, it's more in the exabytes or even zettabytes

Actually, according to this source, the internet was estimated to 487bn gigabytes (487 000 000 terabyte) as of May 2009. With the amount of videos posted on youtube daily, it's much more today.

It's an interesting question

But that aside, I think your logic is good and I can easily think that the internet has a weight of a few gram.