How Much Does The Internet Weigh?

It might seem like a strange question, but the internet really does have a weight!

Internet

This is because the internet runs on electrons which, although minuscule, do have a physical mass.

So, if you were to put all the data stored on the internet on a set of scales, how much would it actually weigh?

What is the weight of the internet?

According to YouTuber Vsauce, the internet weighs about 50 grams, or about the same as a large strawberry!

Keep in mind that this calculation is only an estimate and is based on data from more than a decade ago. As the internet continues to grow, it’s likely this weight will increase.

As an example, Professor John Kubiatowicz, a computer scientist at the University of California, used Einstein’s famous e=mc² formula to calculate that adding 4GB of data to a Kindle would increase its weight by 0.000000000000000001 grams.

Fascinating, right?

Here are a few more astonishing facts about the internet:

It is thought that more than 1.9 billion websites exist on the web.

Every day, around 95 million photographs are uploaded to Instagram.

What’s more, there are now over 4 billion people using the internet. This probably helps explain why, in 2016, internet users consumed bandwidth totalling over one zettabyte – or a billion Terabytes!

Fun Fact

~ Fun Fact ~
The world’s first website was http://info.cern.ch/ and is still online today. As you can see, it’s a basic HTML site with a few lines of text and some hyperlinks. We’ve certainly come a long way in a short space of time!

Resources

https://www.azoquantum.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=68
https://fossbytes.com/how-much-does-the-entire-internet-weigh/
https://lifehacks.io/facts-about-the-internet/

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