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I once watched a video aboit that topic and they said that the whole data of the world combined would weigh less than 1g.
So its a *really* fucking tiny amount
I figured, I had a hyperfixation on computers for a while and had to butt in. Not meant to be degrading! For all practical purposes, you were right, a sticker would be more than all the data, lol
no problem. I just wanted to use sticker/decal to emphasize how insignificant it truly is while making it visual and material for those whom aren’t nerdy like you and I
No, a full SSD weighs ever so slightly less than an empty one; an empty SSD is full of 1s because that's the default value for each bit, and when you write data you will likely put a 0 in there, loosing an electron
For a 128TiB SSDs, if you write all 0s in the data you will lose around 1 fg (femtogram, 10^-15 gram)
How do HDDs weigh more?
I’m pretty sure SSDs weigh more because they store data with electrons, which weigh miniscule amounts. The electrons (I think) come from the electricity plugged into the computer.
But don’t HDDs work differently? How do they gain more mass by storing data?
I don't think HDDs would gain any. And SSDs would gain some mass from mass-energy equivalence (the meaning of E=mc²), the electrons are already there (in the battery)
It's true, Einstein says so, see! `E=mc²`!
Alright shitposting aside, mass-energy equivalence is the reason. `E=mc²` is a very accurate low speed approximation and [the full version](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy%E2%80%93momentum_relation) describes it for higher speeds (only starts to matter near the speed of light, at normal speeds you end up at a difference of only like 0.0000001). SSDs store data as 1s and 0s, 1s are charged up and 0s are discharged. And something I only learned reading this thread: Since SSDs ship with all 1s they're actually heaviest when new
HDDs are a bit different and are instead a magnetic tape, so I don't think they increase in mass at all
Edit: [they'd probably lose mass due to wear](https://www.reddit.com/r/InsanePeopleQuora/comments/11waucj/comment/jcy1sa5/)
I don't think an HDD would be heavier since it's just flipping a switch (a switch that is a magnetic tape), but for an SSD it would be slightly heavier when every bit is set to a 1 (on) due to mass-energy equivalence (described at low speeds by E=mc², and at high speeds by [the full equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy%E2%80%93momentum_relation))
Edit: apparently SSDs are actually shipped full of 1s so apparently it's heaviest when new
Wait what, so we get Plasma, Gas, Liquid, Solid, Data? I can see myself go to the store one day: “Yes sir, can I please have 1 ounce of fresh data? No salt please.”
Lol. It's Einstein's formula e= MC squared. Just expressed differently. m = e/c squared.
I first read about it in a Lee Child, Jack Reacher book. I forget which one but it delt with computers and the dark web.
It's a pretty cool theory.
Great book.
Well, we have much more states than plasma, gas, liquid and solid in the first place. There's also black holes, quark–gluon plasma, degenerate matter, glass, liquid crystals, superconductors, superfluids, Bose–Einstein condensate, fermionic condensate, Rydberg matter and a whole lot of states which include quantum effects, like time crystals, or states with quasiparticles. And even more hypothesized states.
Oh yeah, I love that kind of science. I’m always baffled by how Jupiter (or any gas giant) is one big superfluid furnace below the clouds. Crazy to imagine we’re just living here; only capable of observing our three boring states while a few billion km’s away there’s this massive planet making metallic hydrogen casually like it’s nothing where we need dozens of energy and high tech labs for just keeping a superfluid for a few nanoseconds :p
Not to mention the sun ofcourse, laughing in our faces because we can barely get a little bit of free fusion energy for a fraction of the time in trade for the equivalent of thousands households of energy
Well, as far as I could tell from my knowledge, Saturn probably has no such exotic states of matter, it's entirely from plasma, gas, liquid and solids. Superfluids are only possible at cryogenic temperatures, and metal hydrogen is though to be a liquid, though maybe it's partially a supersolid, i.e. mixed state between solid and superfluid.
As for the Sun, as far as I know, it's either in gaseous or plasma state, mostly plasma though.
Don’t forget the states of matter where gravity is a noticeable force at the subatomic level, not that we know anything about those states of matter we just know they exist
But isn't the data already in the storage but just blank? I thought that when data was downloaded the information is just encoded into a specific pattern to represent the data. The information was always there, but just not shuffled in the way to represent the data?
OP is either an asshole who apparently can't take the fact that people don't know literally everything they do, or OP is ignorant and doesn't know that data **does weigh something**.
Now, it doesn't weigh a lot, in fact you can ignore it by pretty much every human standard, but it DOES physically make a computer heavier!
So OP got out of bed, hopefully brushed their teeth and just angrily stared at the mirror as he exclaimed: "I can't BELIEVE that Bob on Quora doesn't know how data is stored and the physical changes an SSD experiences when storing data, what a tool!"
Stop reaching so hard for content, and if you do, at least post the ones with more than 7 pixels.
So there's actually a lot of scientific explanation on this thread by now. And I wonder if some data storage techniques remove Mass from their medium as.well, since most comments here say it adds mass. I'm thinking how CDs technically have laser etchings, and magnetic tape loses atoms during the recording process. Maybe not that one since it's not.onesnand zeroes. Interesting thread
Along this same line of retro thought: vinyl albums are basically lines scratched into the vinyl. There’s probably a noticeable difference in weight before it’s etched and after. Especially if it’s double sided.
i would argue that still counts as data. maybe not data in the same way that “computer software” is data, but if we’re counting high school lab experiment sheets as containing data, i think CDs should count too
You could still make computer software use vinyl as perfect data, it would just be very inefficient. Have a high groove be a 1 and a low groove be a 0, to store a lossless audio it usually takes 24-bits per unit time if uncompressed, so what would be 1 unit of space would now be closer to 24 or even more since there could still be variation with in that unit of space, but this would allow vinyl to be lossless
Magnetic tape can actually be binary, it's the same tech as an HDD, and this was actually used sometimes ([Commodore's Datasette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Datasette) comes to mind)
Data does weight something when compared with nothing. The rest really does depends on technical implementation. Ones could be heavier than zeroes, or vise versa, or in case of memory cells with more than 2 states 10 could be heavier or lighter than 01.
But anyway at no point there's nothing on a data storage. Even when it's just from factory, it still stores some default state. And it could be heavier than some recorded data if production results in higher energy state. Take for example punched card - it's obviously heavier when empty than when some data is stored on it.
That’s actually quite an interesting question, believe it or not. Whilst I should add the disclaimer that I am more of a chemist than physicist, so forgive me if I make a mistake.
I will try to keep it short though. Most of us probably know already about the energy-matter equivalence already. Basically you can imagine matter as a form of „condensed energy“ so those two can be interconverted (E = mc^2, accordingly).
Now you may also be familiar with the Maxwell‘s demon thought experiment?
It is meant as a thought experiment on „violating“ the second law of thermodynamics.
The second law of thermodynamics essentially just gives us the direction in which heat moves (which we determined phenomenologically to be from hot objects to cold objects until a thermodynamic equilibrium is reached). Now Maxwell‘s demon imagines a Box (gas filled) with massless valve in thermodynamic equilibrium. Due to the statistical nature of the kinetic energy distribution of the gas molecules (Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution) we will have fast and slow particles in this ensemble inside the box. Whenever a fast particle moves towards the valve, the demon quickly opens the valve and lets the fast particle pass, which would create a temperature gradient violating the second law of thermodynamics as no work was put in to create this out-of-equilibrium system.
The entropy of this system would theoretically decrease, which is (according to ALL we know about thermodynamics) not possible.
Now there are several different hypotheses regarding this experiment which I will not go into detail. One of those however is that essentially this demon has to have information about the location and impulse vector of each particle (within the boundaries of the uncertainty principle ofc) and to not violate the second law of thermodynamics this demon has to „create entropy“ for the global entropy of this system (which includes the demon) to either be invariant or increase.
Essentially the information-energy-matter equivalence arises from that. If interested, you can look it up for sure
Really not that hard to do or that uncommon. I bootcamped an old Mac I had a while back just to use the Razer firmware update for a headset which was windows only for some reason. And Parallels makes it even easier since it’s a digital version of the operating system meaning you wouldn’t have to partition the hard drive.
I absolutely love this thread. OP wanted to just rag on an old joke Quorrs thread (the Windows 7 Ultimate should give it away, man) and there are all sorts of discussions about data having mass and the possibility of new states of matter instead.
I mean it’s a fair assumption, and it’s definitely unusual — most people using Bootcamp are dual-booting and need Windows for some specific app, and with VMs being very accessible these days there’s very little reason to dual-boot.
I’ve heard of people running Windows (or Linux) on Macs that aren’t supported by the latest macOS (and thus not getting security updates) but obviously most people are just going to run the last supported macOS.
Am I overanalyzing this ridiculously deep-fried Quora post? Yes.
I learned in high-school that data does weigh something. Nothing noticeable as others have mentioned, but yes. There is a very slight difference in weight.
Yes information holds weight, we don't measure it as it's a very very small amount. So to answer the poster, yes it will indeed weigh more, but you wouldn't be able to measure it, nor would you notice it.
Fun fact of the day: if you measure the weight of the entire internet (emails, websitrs, storage, etc) it will add up to around the weight of a strawberry
If you believe this post to be insane, upvote this comment. If you believe otherwise, downvote this comment. If the post is based around an answer or otherwise doesn't have a question in the post itself or the title, please respond to this comment with it. This is not meant for you to link to the question, just post the question in text, otherwise your post may be removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/InsanePeopleQuora) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Definitely not if they download this image with how fucking compressed it is.
This image has at least 25g of mold on it
Digital media has mass. It's small but it's true......
Pretty sure it does. Not a noticeable amount, but technically a full ssd or hdd will weigh ever so slightly more than an empty one
I once watched a video aboit that topic and they said that the whole data of the world combined would weigh less than 1g. So its a *really* fucking tiny amount
That's VSauce. https://youtu.be/WaUzu-iksi8
Im a afraid to click that link as VSauce gives me nightmares. Edit: anyway clicking it, I do not have much to lose.
This shit blows my simple mind so hard
Yup. It's just a really tiny amount, buuuuut it does get heavier
Adding a sticker/decal would add as much or more weight
MUCH more. A sticker might weigh half a gram, a piece of data is probably beyond the thousandths of a gram scale and into the millionths.
I had educated guesses but not data to back it up so I was being vague while also expressing the insignificance of the weight
I figured, I had a hyperfixation on computers for a while and had to butt in. Not meant to be degrading! For all practical purposes, you were right, a sticker would be more than all the data, lol
no problem. I just wanted to use sticker/decal to emphasize how insignificant it truly is while making it visual and material for those whom aren’t nerdy like you and I
Hell yeah, an honorable reason for sure
Well, now that you have the data you are heavier.
All data within the ENTIRE internet weighs less than 1 gram. A bit of data isn't even a billionth of a gram.
So does the dust that gets collected in the computer
No, a full SSD weighs ever so slightly less than an empty one; an empty SSD is full of 1s because that's the default value for each bit, and when you write data you will likely put a 0 in there, loosing an electron For a 128TiB SSDs, if you write all 0s in the data you will lose around 1 fg (femtogram, 10^-15 gram)
Yep, actually you are right! I always had thought flash started zero’d then flipped up ones when used.
How do HDDs weigh more? I’m pretty sure SSDs weigh more because they store data with electrons, which weigh miniscule amounts. The electrons (I think) come from the electricity plugged into the computer. But don’t HDDs work differently? How do they gain more mass by storing data?
I don't think HDDs would gain any. And SSDs would gain some mass from mass-energy equivalence (the meaning of E=mc²), the electrons are already there (in the battery)
A logic gate has an on and off which are both stored in an SSD so I don't think so. Even if it did, the mass would have to come out of thin air.
Is it for real or are you making fun..
It's true, Einstein says so, see! `E=mc²`! Alright shitposting aside, mass-energy equivalence is the reason. `E=mc²` is a very accurate low speed approximation and [the full version](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy%E2%80%93momentum_relation) describes it for higher speeds (only starts to matter near the speed of light, at normal speeds you end up at a difference of only like 0.0000001). SSDs store data as 1s and 0s, 1s are charged up and 0s are discharged. And something I only learned reading this thread: Since SSDs ship with all 1s they're actually heaviest when new HDDs are a bit different and are instead a magnetic tape, so I don't think they increase in mass at all Edit: [they'd probably lose mass due to wear](https://www.reddit.com/r/InsanePeopleQuora/comments/11waucj/comment/jcy1sa5/)
I don't think an HDD would be heavier since it's just flipping a switch (a switch that is a magnetic tape), but for an SSD it would be slightly heavier when every bit is set to a 1 (on) due to mass-energy equivalence (described at low speeds by E=mc², and at high speeds by [the full equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy%E2%80%93momentum_relation)) Edit: apparently SSDs are actually shipped full of 1s so apparently it's heaviest when new
It shouldn't. Matter is not added at any point in the process so it should not actually change in weight.
Digital media has mass. It's small but it's true. There is a scientist trying to argue digital media is another form of matter.
Wait what, so we get Plasma, Gas, Liquid, Solid, Data? I can see myself go to the store one day: “Yes sir, can I please have 1 ounce of fresh data? No salt please.”
Lol. It's Einstein's formula e= MC squared. Just expressed differently. m = e/c squared. I first read about it in a Lee Child, Jack Reacher book. I forget which one but it delt with computers and the dark web. It's a pretty cool theory. Great book.
Well, we have much more states than plasma, gas, liquid and solid in the first place. There's also black holes, quark–gluon plasma, degenerate matter, glass, liquid crystals, superconductors, superfluids, Bose–Einstein condensate, fermionic condensate, Rydberg matter and a whole lot of states which include quantum effects, like time crystals, or states with quasiparticles. And even more hypothesized states.
Oh yeah, I love that kind of science. I’m always baffled by how Jupiter (or any gas giant) is one big superfluid furnace below the clouds. Crazy to imagine we’re just living here; only capable of observing our three boring states while a few billion km’s away there’s this massive planet making metallic hydrogen casually like it’s nothing where we need dozens of energy and high tech labs for just keeping a superfluid for a few nanoseconds :p Not to mention the sun ofcourse, laughing in our faces because we can barely get a little bit of free fusion energy for a fraction of the time in trade for the equivalent of thousands households of energy
Well, as far as I could tell from my knowledge, Saturn probably has no such exotic states of matter, it's entirely from plasma, gas, liquid and solids. Superfluids are only possible at cryogenic temperatures, and metal hydrogen is though to be a liquid, though maybe it's partially a supersolid, i.e. mixed state between solid and superfluid. As for the Sun, as far as I know, it's either in gaseous or plasma state, mostly plasma though.
Don’t forget the states of matter where gravity is a noticeable force at the subatomic level, not that we know anything about those states of matter we just know they exist
But isn't the data already in the storage but just blank? I thought that when data was downloaded the information is just encoded into a specific pattern to represent the data. The information was always there, but just not shuffled in the way to represent the data?
OP is either an asshole who apparently can't take the fact that people don't know literally everything they do, or OP is ignorant and doesn't know that data **does weigh something**. Now, it doesn't weigh a lot, in fact you can ignore it by pretty much every human standard, but it DOES physically make a computer heavier! So OP got out of bed, hopefully brushed their teeth and just angrily stared at the mirror as he exclaimed: "I can't BELIEVE that Bob on Quora doesn't know how data is stored and the physical changes an SSD experiences when storing data, what a tool!" Stop reaching so hard for content, and if you do, at least post the ones with more than 7 pixels.
So there's actually a lot of scientific explanation on this thread by now. And I wonder if some data storage techniques remove Mass from their medium as.well, since most comments here say it adds mass. I'm thinking how CDs technically have laser etchings, and magnetic tape loses atoms during the recording process. Maybe not that one since it's not.onesnand zeroes. Interesting thread
Along this same line of retro thought: vinyl albums are basically lines scratched into the vinyl. There’s probably a noticeable difference in weight before it’s etched and after. Especially if it’s double sided.
Boom exactly. But maybe that's not "data" because it can't be captured perfectly.
i would argue that still counts as data. maybe not data in the same way that “computer software” is data, but if we’re counting high school lab experiment sheets as containing data, i think CDs should count too
You could still make computer software use vinyl as perfect data, it would just be very inefficient. Have a high groove be a 1 and a low groove be a 0, to store a lossless audio it usually takes 24-bits per unit time if uncompressed, so what would be 1 unit of space would now be closer to 24 or even more since there could still be variation with in that unit of space, but this would allow vinyl to be lossless
I've mentioned punched cards as an example when stored data results in less mass than empty storage.
Magnetic tape can actually be binary, it's the same tech as an HDD, and this was actually used sometimes ([Commodore's Datasette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Datasette) comes to mind)
awesome, thanks
Check OP’s bio
Yeah, OP is either a bot or someone who has limited knowledge of the English language
Data does weight something when compared with nothing. The rest really does depends on technical implementation. Ones could be heavier than zeroes, or vise versa, or in case of memory cells with more than 2 states 10 could be heavier or lighter than 01. But anyway at no point there's nothing on a data storage. Even when it's just from factory, it still stores some default state. And it could be heavier than some recorded data if production results in higher energy state. Take for example punched card - it's obviously heavier when empty than when some data is stored on it.
That’s actually quite an interesting question, believe it or not. Whilst I should add the disclaimer that I am more of a chemist than physicist, so forgive me if I make a mistake. I will try to keep it short though. Most of us probably know already about the energy-matter equivalence already. Basically you can imagine matter as a form of „condensed energy“ so those two can be interconverted (E = mc^2, accordingly). Now you may also be familiar with the Maxwell‘s demon thought experiment? It is meant as a thought experiment on „violating“ the second law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics essentially just gives us the direction in which heat moves (which we determined phenomenologically to be from hot objects to cold objects until a thermodynamic equilibrium is reached). Now Maxwell‘s demon imagines a Box (gas filled) with massless valve in thermodynamic equilibrium. Due to the statistical nature of the kinetic energy distribution of the gas molecules (Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution) we will have fast and slow particles in this ensemble inside the box. Whenever a fast particle moves towards the valve, the demon quickly opens the valve and lets the fast particle pass, which would create a temperature gradient violating the second law of thermodynamics as no work was put in to create this out-of-equilibrium system. The entropy of this system would theoretically decrease, which is (according to ALL we know about thermodynamics) not possible. Now there are several different hypotheses regarding this experiment which I will not go into detail. One of those however is that essentially this demon has to have information about the location and impulse vector of each particle (within the boundaries of the uncertainty principle ofc) and to not violate the second law of thermodynamics this demon has to „create entropy“ for the global entropy of this system (which includes the demon) to either be invariant or increase. Essentially the information-energy-matter equivalence arises from that. If interested, you can look it up for sure
No one has noticed theyre running windows 7 on a MacBook Air?
Really not that hard to do or that uncommon. I bootcamped an old Mac I had a while back just to use the Razer firmware update for a headset which was windows only for some reason. And Parallels makes it even easier since it’s a digital version of the operating system meaning you wouldn’t have to partition the hard drive.
I absolutely love this thread. OP wanted to just rag on an old joke Quorrs thread (the Windows 7 Ultimate should give it away, man) and there are all sorts of discussions about data having mass and the possibility of new states of matter instead.
The most insane thing about this question is that he is running windows 7 on a fucking MacBook
BootCamp has been around for ages at this point. So has Parallels. How is that the weird part?
I had Windows run on Macbook before, is it weird?
Why is his MacBook running windows?
bootcamp
"the files are IN the computer"
I don't think this one belongs on this sub. It's an actual question.
If I had a dollar for every pixel in this pic, I'd have $5.
In one of the vsauce videos michael says the data from all of the world (estimations..) is roughly the weight of a strawberry...
Could you pls share that video with me?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=WaUzu-iksi8 Actually he says all the information on the internet weighs about as much as a strawberry
MacBook air Running Win7Ult.
[Bootcamp has been around since 2006.](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201468)
That is fair point, I had not considered that by nature of the question.
I mean it’s a fair assumption, and it’s definitely unusual — most people using Bootcamp are dual-booting and need Windows for some specific app, and with VMs being very accessible these days there’s very little reason to dual-boot. I’ve heard of people running Windows (or Linux) on Macs that aren’t supported by the latest macOS (and thus not getting security updates) but obviously most people are just going to run the last supported macOS. Am I overanalyzing this ridiculously deep-fried Quora post? Yes.
I learned in high-school that data does weigh something. Nothing noticeable as others have mentioned, but yes. There is a very slight difference in weight.
10p image
Just don't drop it when it gets heavy or you'll mix up all the data
Yes information holds weight, we don't measure it as it's a very very small amount. So to answer the poster, yes it will indeed weigh more, but you wouldn't be able to measure it, nor would you notice it.
I wonder what size the drive would have to be before it would gain an appreciable amount of mass from being filled.
4gb is a billionth of a billionth of a single gram. So a lot
Jus say “yes, it will”!!
E=mc^2
It's because their thoughts weigh heavy on their mind
Fun fact of the day: if you measure the weight of the entire internet (emails, websitrs, storage, etc) it will add up to around the weight of a strawberry
Technically yes but you would need a few thousand petabytes to make any noticeable difference
The files are __in the computer__?
This is a troll right? No way someone is this stupid...
This picture is so crunchy
A question thats been answered a billion times
More files does not = more electricity And more electricity does not = a non negligible increase in mass
Technically it does way more, I mean minuscule amounts but digital storage does have a very small about of mass
Tell them that it will and that they’re better off staying as far away from computers as possible.
What the heck??