> Put simply, it's all about electrons. For data storage and transfer to happen on any device — smartphone, desktop PC or internet server — you need electrons. And while these particles aren't exactly massive, they do have weight: approximately 9.1 x 10^-31 kg. Take that and apply it to an ordinary email, which comes in at about 50 kilobytes: You need 8 billion electrons. Sounds like a lot but only comes in at two ten-thousandths of a quadrillionth of an ounce.
> Seitz scaled this up to determine the weight of all internet traffic and got 50g, or the weight of one strawberry. Applied to all the stored information online, which is around 5 million terabytes, the number is just 0.2 millionths of an ounce
> Put simply, it's all about electrons. For data storage and transfer to happen on any device — smartphone, desktop PC or internet server — you need electrons. And while these particles aren't exactly massive, they do have weight: approximately 9.1 x 10^-31 kg. Take that and apply it to an ordinary email, which comes in at about 50 kilobytes: You need 8 billion electrons. Sounds like a lot but only comes in at two ten-thousandths of a quadrillionth of an ounce.
> Seitz scaled this up to determine the weight of all internet traffic and got 50g, or the weight of one strawberry. Applied to all the stored information online, which is around 5 million terabytes, the number is just 0.2 millionths of an ounce