News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Internet Weighs About as Much as a Strawberry.

Re:The Internet Weighs About as Much as a Strawberry by rflrob on Wednesday November 02, 2011 @08:36PM (#3189591)
Given the chain of connection between information, entropy, energy, and mass, is that 0.2 millionths of an ounce number the theoretical minimum amount information-mass of the internet, or is that the amount of mass our systems use to store it?

Assuming that the internet contains 10^19 bytes (10 million terabytes, twice the number given in the video), that's approximately 10^20 nats, which, when you multiply by Boltzmann's constant (1x10^-23 J/K) and Room temperature(3*10^2), is on the order of 0.1 J. That energy, divided by c^2, comes out to 10^-18 kg, or about 10^-17 oz (give or take an order of magnitude or two).

So I guess, really, the internet doesn't even come close to weighing as much as the lowball estimate from the video.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Internet Weighs About as Much as a Strawberry by sukuriant on Wednesday November 02, 2011 @10:31PM (#3189921)
I presume you're using e=mc^2 here. That's not how e=mc^2 was meant to be used[1]. And, this is using the actual mass of an electron: 9.10938188e-31 kilograms (Google)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Internet Weighs About as Much as a Strawberry by rsaarelm on Thursday November 03, 2011 @12:35AM (#3190311)
I think grandparent is talking about Landauer's principle which relates information and energy, electrons aren't involved in any way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Internet Weighs About as Much as a Strawberry by sukuriant on Thursday November 03, 2011 @06:22AM (#3191079)
Oh I see now, and it also looks like he's evaluating the data on the internet, not the internet in motion, which was where the mass-of-a-strawberry idea comes in.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Internet Weighs About as Much as a Strawberry by fragsworth on Thursday November 03, 2011 @12:55AM (#3190363)
I don't think we can have an accurate "theoretical minimum mass" for information because it is highly dependent on our (incomplete) understanding of small particles.
[ Parent | on HN ]