The weight of all the electrons in motion that make up the internet at any one moment is equivalent to 50 grams, according to YouTube channel Vsauce.
The claim seems to stimulated by recent reports that each book loaded onto an Amazon Kindle e-reader makes the device slightly heavier.
Using Einstein’s E=mc² formula, which states that energy and mass are directly related, Professor John Kubiatowicz, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, calculated that filling a 4GB Kindle to its storage limit would increase its weight by a billionth of a billionth of a gram, or 0.000000000000000001g.
Check out the full explanation of the 50 gram weight estimate, which apparently, accodring to Vsauce, is the same as a strawberry.
Unfortunately though, the mathematics relies on dated figures.
It turns out that since the 2006 estimate of between 75 and 100 million servers online, many more vast data centres have been constructed by companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft. As well, server processors now run at higher clockspeeds.
Who’s keen to work out the updated weight. Go on.
