On today’s show, we told you about how a fully loaded Kindle weighs a bit more than one with no books on it. How much more? A billionth OF a billionth of a gram. Not much. That’s because to store data an electron needs to be captured and assigned to keep a bit of information at a 1 or a 0. Energy is needed to keep that electron assigned and Einstein teaches us that energy and mass are equivalent, therefore all this energy has weight. So if you extrapolate out from one Kindle to the entire internet and all the information on it, you get the weight equivalent of one strawberry.
BUT DON’T ACCIDENTALLY EAT THE INTERNET. We need it.
Stories You Might Like
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
