{"id":14480,"date":"2025-03-24T10:35:49","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T10:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=14480"},"modified":"2025-03-24T10:35:49","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T10:35:49","slug":"the-weight-of-the-internet-will-shock-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=14480","title":{"rendered":"The Weight of the Internet Will Shock You"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><span class=\"lead-in-text-callout\">The internet is<\/span> massive. But does it have \u2026 actual mass? Big server farms and miles of fiber-optic cables do, of course, but we don\u2019t mean the infrastructure of the internet. We mean the internet itself. The information. The data. The cybernetics. And because storing and moving stuff through cyberspace requires energy\u2014which, per Einstein, has mass\u2014it should, in theory, be possible to calculate the internet\u2019s weight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Way back in the adolescent days of the web, in 2006, a Harvard physicist named Russell Seitz <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/adamant.typepad.com\/seitz\/2006\/10\/weighing_the_we.html\" class=\"external-link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/adamant.typepad.com\/seitz\/2006\/10\/weighing_the_we.html&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/adamant.typepad.com\/seitz\/2006\/10\/weighing_the_we.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">made an attempt<\/a>. His conclusion? If you consider the mass of the energy powering the servers, the internet comes out to roughly 50 grams\u2014or about the weight of a couple strawberries. People still use Seitz\u2019s comparison to this day. <em>We\u2019re all wasting our lives on something we could swallow in one bite!<\/em><\/p>\n<figure class=\"AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed\">\n<div class=\"AssetEmbedAssetContainer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-container\"><span class=\"SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB responsive-asset AssetEmbedResponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__responsive-asset\"><picture class=\"ResponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa AssetEmbedResponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__responsive-asset responsive-image\"><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Current estimates say that 1 gram of DNA can encode 215 petabytes\u2014or 215 x 1015 bytes\u2014of information. If the internet is...\" class=\"ResponsiveImageContainer-eybHBd fptoWY responsive-image__image lazyload\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bd119b98a92e56e56e4\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots.jpg\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bd119b98a92e56e56e4\/master\/w_120,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots.jpg 120w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bd119b98a92e56e56e4\/master\/w_240,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots.jpg 240w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bd119b98a92e56e56e4\/master\/w_320,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots.jpg 320w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bd119b98a92e56e56e4\/master\/w_640,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots.jpg 640w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bd119b98a92e56e56e4\/master\/w_960,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots.jpg 960w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bd119b98a92e56e56e4\/master\/w_1280,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots.jpg 1280w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bd119b98a92e56e56e4\/master\/w_1600,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"100vw\"\/><\/noscript><\/picture><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"CaptionWrapper-jSZdqE fJvQtP caption AssetEmbedCaption-fNQBPI dDrfgT asset-embed__caption\" data-testid=\"caption-wrapper\"><span class=\"BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptionText-bHjzlu iUEiRd kVUvEC iXWezO caption__text\"><\/p>\n<p>Current estimates say that 1 gram of DNA can encode 215 petabytes\u2014or 215 x 10<sup>15<\/sup> bytes\u2014of information. If the internet is 175 x 1024<sup>7<\/sup> bytes, that\u2019s 960,947 grams\u2019 worth of DNA. That\u2019s the same as 64,000 strawberries.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"paywall\">But a lot has happened since 2006\u2014Instagram, iPhones, and the AI boom, to name a few. (By Seitz\u2019s logic, the internet would now weigh as much as a potato.) There\u2019s also the fact that, around the time of Seitz\u2019s calculation, Discover magazine proposed a <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.discovermagazine.com\/technology\/how-much-does-the-internet-weigh\" class=\"external-link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.discovermagazine.com\/technology\/how-much-does-the-internet-weigh&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.discovermagazine.com\/technology\/how-much-does-the-internet-weigh\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">different method<\/a>. Information on the internet is written in bits, so what if you looked at the weight of the electrons needed to encode those bits? Using all internet traffic\u2014then estimated to be 40 petabytes\u2014Discover put the internet\u2019s weight at a tiny fraction (5 millionths) of a gram. So, more like a squeeze of strawberry juice. WIRED thought it was time to investigate for ourselves.<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"feature-large-callout\" class=\"CalloutFeatureLargeWrapper-cGjDsT fXVWFS\">\n<figure class=\"AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed\">\n<div class=\"AssetEmbedAssetContainer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-container\"><span class=\"SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB responsive-asset AssetEmbedResponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__responsive-asset\"><picture class=\"ResponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa AssetEmbedResponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__responsive-asset responsive-image\"><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"If the internet is the equivalent of 960947 grams worth of DNA thats the same as onethird of a Cybertruck.\" class=\"ResponsiveImageContainer-eybHBd fptoWY responsive-image__image lazyload\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bed751739144b7d82eb\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots3.jpg\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bed751739144b7d82eb\/master\/w_120,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots3.jpg 120w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bed751739144b7d82eb\/master\/w_240,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots3.jpg 240w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bed751739144b7d82eb\/master\/w_320,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots3.jpg 320w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bed751739144b7d82eb\/master\/w_640,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots3.jpg 640w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bed751739144b7d82eb\/master\/w_960,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots3.jpg 960w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bed751739144b7d82eb\/master\/w_1280,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots3.jpg 1280w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9bed751739144b7d82eb\/master\/w_1600,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots3.jpg 1600w\" data-sizes=\"100vw\"\/><\/noscript><\/picture><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"CaptionWrapper-jSZdqE fJvQtP caption AssetEmbedCaption-fNQBPI dDrfgT asset-embed__caption\" data-testid=\"caption-wrapper\"><span class=\"BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptionText-bHjzlu iUEiRd kVUvEC iXWezO caption__text\"><\/p>\n<p>If the internet is the equivalent of 960,947 grams\u2019 worth of DNA, that\u2019s the same as one-third of a Cybertruck.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"paywall\">First up: the server-energy method. \u201cFifty grams is just wrong,\u201d says Christopher White, president of <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.nec-labs.com\/about-us\/office-of-the-president\/christopher-white\/\" class=\"external-link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.nec-labs.com\/about-us\/office-of-the-president\/christopher-white\/&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nec-labs.com\/about-us\/office-of-the-president\/christopher-white\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NEC Laboratories America<\/a> and a veteran of storied research powerhouse Bell Labs. Other scientists we spoke to agreed. Daniel Whiteson, a particle physicist at UC Irvine and cohost of the podcast <em>Daniel and Kelly\u2019s Extraordinary Universe<\/em>, said it\u2019s an overly convenient way to get \u201cthe units you want\u201d\u2014like assuming the price of a doughnut could be calculated by dividing the total number of doughnuts in the world by the world GDP. Preposterous! That would give us a doughnut-per-dollar figure, sure, \u201cbut it wouldn\u2019t be correct, or even close,\u201d Whiteson says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Discover magazine\u2019s calculation also seemed a little off to us. It has more to do with the transmission of the internet, as opposed to the internet itself. It also assumes a set number of electrons needed to encode information. In reality, the number is incredibly varied and depends on the specific chips and circuits being used.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">White suggested a third method. What if we pretend to put all the data stored on the internet, across all the hundreds of millions of servers around the world, in just one place? How much energy would we need to encode that data, and how much would that energy weigh? In 2018, the International Data Corporation estimated that by 2025, the internet\u2019s datasphere would reach <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.networkworld.com\/article\/966746\/idc-expect-175-zettabytes-of-data-worldwide-by-2025.html\" class=\"external-link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.networkworld.com\/article\/966746\/idc-expect-175-zettabytes-of-data-worldwide-by-2025.html&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.networkworld.com\/article\/966746\/idc-expect-175-zettabytes-of-data-worldwide-by-2025.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">175 zettabytes<\/a>, or 1.65 x 10<sup>24<\/sup> bits. (1 zettabyte = 1024<sup>7<\/sup> bytes and 1 byte = 8 bits.) White suggested multiplying those bits by a mathematical term\u2014k<sub>B<\/sub>T ln2, if you\u2019re curious\u2014that captures the minimum energy needed to reset a bit. (Temperature is a factor, because storing data is easier in colder conditions. Meaning: The internet is lighter in space than it is in Tucson, Arizona.) We can then take that number, which will represent energy, and call on <em>E = mc<sup>2<\/sup><\/em> to reach the total mass. At room temperature, the entirety of the internet would weigh (1.65 x 10<sup>24<\/sup>) x (2.9\u00d710<sup>\u201321<\/sup>)\/c<sup>2<\/sup>, or 5.32 x 10<sup>\u201314<\/sup> grams. That\u2019s 53 <em>quadrillionths<\/em> of a gram.<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"feature-large-callout\" class=\"CalloutFeatureLargeWrapper-cGjDsT fXVWFS\">\n<figure class=\"AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed\">\n<div class=\"AssetEmbedAssetContainer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-container\"><span class=\"SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB responsive-asset AssetEmbedResponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__responsive-asset\"><picture class=\"ResponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa AssetEmbedResponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__responsive-asset responsive-image\"><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Image may contain Person\" class=\"ResponsiveImageContainer-eybHBd fptoWY responsive-image__image lazyload\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9c0219b98a92e56e56e6\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots2.jpg\" data-sizes=\"auto\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9c0219b98a92e56e56e6\/master\/w_120,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots2.jpg 120w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9c0219b98a92e56e56e6\/master\/w_240,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots2.jpg 240w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9c0219b98a92e56e56e6\/master\/w_320,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots2.jpg 320w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9c0219b98a92e56e56e6\/master\/w_640,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots2.jpg 640w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9c0219b98a92e56e56e6\/master\/w_960,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots2.jpg 960w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9c0219b98a92e56e56e6\/master\/w_1280,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots2.jpg 1280w, https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/67dd9c0219b98a92e56e56e6\/master\/w_1600,c_limit\/weight-of-the-internet-spots2.jpg 1600w\" data-sizes=\"100vw\"\/><\/noscript><\/picture><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"CaptionWrapper-jSZdqE fJvQtP caption AssetEmbedCaption-fNQBPI dDrfgT asset-embed__caption\" data-testid=\"caption-wrapper\"><span class=\"BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptionText-bHjzlu iUEiRd kVUvEC iXWezO caption__text\"><\/p>\n<p>If the internet is 175 x 1024<sup>7<\/sup> bytes, that\u2019s 960,947 grams\u2019 worth of DNA. That\u2019s the same as 10.6 American males.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Which \u2026 is no fun. Even if it has almost no physical mass, the internet still <em>feels<\/em> weighty, to those billions of us weighed down by it every day. White, who has previously attempted similar philosophical estimates, clarified that in reality, the web is so intricate that it is \u201cessentially unknowable,\u201d but why not try? In recent years, scientists have floated the idea of storing data within the building blocks of nature: DNA. So what if we were to weigh the internet in those terms? <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/dna-the-ultimate-data-storage-solution\/\" class=\"external-link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/dna-the-ultimate-data-storage-solution\/&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/dna-the-ultimate-data-storage-solution\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Current estimates<\/a> say that 1 gram of DNA can encode 215 petabytes\u2014or 215 x 10<sup>15<\/sup> bytes\u2014of information. If the internet is 175 x 1024<sup>7<\/sup> bytes, that\u2019s 960,947 grams\u2019 worth of DNA. That\u2019s the same as 10.6 American males. Or one third of a Cybertruck. Or 64,000 strawberries.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"paywall\"\/>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><em>Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor at<\/em> <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/story\/weight-of-the-internet\/mailto:mail@wired.com\">mail@wired.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The internet is massive. But does it have \u2026 actual mass? Big server farms and miles of fiber-optic cables do, of course, but we don\u2019t mean the infrastructure of the internet. We mean the internet itself. The information. The data. The cybernetics. And because storing and moving stuff through cyberspace requires energy\u2014which, per Einstein, has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":738,"featured_media":14481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[703],"tags":[2446,2805,777,1600,3732,918,3731,3733,930,915],"class_list":["post-14480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-computer","tag-computer-science","tag-computers","tag-data","tag-einstein","tag-energy","tag-frontiers-of-computing","tag-information","tag-internet","tag-physics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Weight of the Internet Will Shock You | Unlock Informed Choices with Us<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Depending on who you ask, the internet weighs no more than a potato, a strawberry\u2014or something much, much smaller. WIRED investigates.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=14480\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Weight of the Internet Will Shock You | Unlock Informed Choices with Us\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Depending on who you ask, the internet weighs no more than a potato, a strawberry\u2014or something much, much smaller. 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