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How Heavy Is the Internet?

Posted by samzenpus on from the he's-not-heavy-he's-my-router dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Ever wondered how much the internet physically weighs? 498,438,559,990kg, according to CNET. To reach this figure, they added together public data on the weight of every computer, server and connecting cable. To this they added 6,075,000kg of iPhones, and over 6,800,000kg of Blackberries. Finally, they added the weight of 287,524 viruses and 85 billion+ webpages."

9 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Slightly heavier then... by Anachragnome · · Score: 5, Funny

    "How Heavy Is the Internet?"

    Slightly heavier then the total weight of the worlds useless journalists.

    1. Re:Slightly heavier then... by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Funny

      What a fucked up metric. That's like asking "how red is 7?" or "what's the personality of a grapefruit?"

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:Slightly heavier then... by tool462 · · Score: 5, Funny

      "how red is 7?"

      Just about half, assuming 4 bits per channel.

      "what's the personality of a grapefruit?"

      Bitter.

    3. Re:Slightly heavier then... by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Funny

      What a fucked up metric. That's like asking "how red is 7?" or "what's the personality of a grapefruit?"

      Your momma is so fat, her circumference is 3.1415 internets.
      /idleispants

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
  2. Don't be silly. by Mr.+Bad+Example · · Score: 4, Funny

    The internet doesn't weigh anything.

  3. idleispants by davidwr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why isn't this in idle?

    If it's supposed to be serious, you have to amortize the weight of the equipment over its uses. A desktop that spends half its use playing solitaire, 1/4 of its use surfing the web, and 1/4 of its use spamming the world under viral control only counts for half.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  4. Re:OOOPS! by WaywardGeek · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sorry for this lame thought: One day, long after it as it becomes self-aware, the Internet will collapse under it's own weight into a black hole, becoming the creator of a whole new universe.

    --
    Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
  5. What a useless question by straponego · · Score: 4, Funny

    I need to know how much of the internet is 1, and how much is 0.

    I suppose I could get a start on that by running VMs of the most popular OSs, and examining snapshots of each one, multiplying that by... oh, and do the same with backbone traffic... be a bit of a pain to handle all the embedded stuff, but in principle... well, in principle, the internet could be represented as a single number. I wonder if it's odd or even. I guess it depends on who has the last bit.

    Ooops, time to takes me pills again.

  6. No by N7DR · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ever wondered how much the internet physically weighs?

    No.

    And, oddly, even after someone else has asked the question, I still don't.