How Much Does the Internet Weigh?

As much as a strawberry ... or just one grain of sand
By Mark Russell,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 6, 2011 2:50 PM CST

How much does the Internet weigh? No, it's not a Zen koan. The answer is about 1.8 ounces, around the same as a single strawberry, reports the Telegraph. How did anyone figure this out? Well, the Internet runs on electricity, and electrons have a tiny amount of weight—so researchers just added up the weight of all the electrons in motion on the Internet's 75 million to 100 million networks and servers, and presto, they came up with the weight of a strawberry.

The estimate is based on the Internet's size 5 years ago, however, so it's a little outdated. And it only accounts for the energy needed to run the Internet. The weight of all the information contained on the Internet adds up to, well, even less. To figure that out, folks at the YouTube channel VSauce estimated the size of the Internet—at 5 million terabytes of information—and multiplied that by the weight of one electron. The result? All the photos, emails, celebrity gossip, Facebook updates, and everything else come to just 0.2 millionths of an ounce, or about the same as a single grain of sand. (More internet stories.)

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