# Could All the Internet Weigh Less Than a Strawberry?

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/smile-with-daniel-7904799/could-all-the-internet-weigh-less-than-a-strawberry
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/smile-with-daniel-7904799/could-all-the-internet-weigh-less-than-a-strawberry.md
Podcast: [Smile with Daniel](https://stenobird.com/podcast/smile-with-daniel-7904799)
Published: 2026-07-28T04:52:59+00:00
Episode link: https://rss.com/podcasts/smile-with-daniel/3026823
Audio file: https://content.rss.com/episodes/390398/3026823/smile-with-daniel/2026_07_28_04_52_56_c752746f-402d-47aa-ac99-0b0e163689c1.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/smile-with-daniel-7904799/episodes/could-all-the-internet-weigh-less-than-a-strawberry
Duration seconds: 403

## Resource

Mom asks Daniel a riddle. If you could put all the information on the internet on a scale -- every photo, video, message, and website -- how much would it weigh? He says tons. Some physicists have estimated it could weigh roughly as much as a strawberry. And the reason why is one of the most mind-bending things about how computers actually work. Everything stored on a computer is ultimately represented as ones and zeros. Those ones and zeros have to be physically encoded somewhere inside the machine. In many kinds of memory, electrons help create the states that represent data. In others, it is magnetic orientation, or optical patterns, or voltage levels. What all of these have in common is that the physical states involved weigh almost nothing. An electron weighs about nine times ten to the power of minus thirty-one kilograms. A number so small it is essentially beyond imagination. In 2006, Harvard physicist Russell Seitz estimated the mass associated with the electrons involved in storing and moving information across the internet. His figure came out to roughly fifty grams -- about the weight of a strawberry. That estimate is contested. Different scientists using different methods and different definitions get very different numbers -- some far smaller, some larger. But whatever the precise calculation, the principle holds. The physical states encoding all that information weigh almost nothing. Daniel asks whether downloading a movie makes his phone heavier. The answer is technically yes -- by an amount so small it would never be measurable on any scale that exists. The memory inside the phone changes state to store the movie. Changing those physical states changes the total mass by an unimaginably tiny amount. Nothing significant comes in from outside to add weight…

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