As the as the world becomes more interconnected through the internet, humanity is creating more data than ever before. With some ISPs suspending data caps due to the coronavirus outbreak, this is truer than ever. But while we often think about data as theoretical, it actually does have mass, albeit a very tiny amount. But one physicist thinks that one day soon, the total mass of data could actually outnumber the total atoms on Earth.
The physicist posing this hypothesis is Melvin Vopson, who lectures at the University of Portsmouth in England. He points to evidence that 90% of the world's data has been created in the last 10 years alone. From there, he assumes a growth of 25 percent data increase per year, which makes sense, considering how much data we can move through things like Google Stadia. Using these numbers, he shows that the world could be mostly data by the year 2245.
It's unclear exactly what that world will look like. Vopson has argued before that data is actually a 5th state of matter, alongside solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. While there are already planets made up of liquids and gasses, there are, as far we know, no data planets. But considering that there will soon be over 1 billion people playing online games, Earth could become the first.
Volpson says that "assuming the planetary power limitations are solved, one could envisage a future world mostly computer simulated and dominated by digital bits and computer code." However other scientists are not so sure.
No one is arguing that data doesn't have mass, but it's worth noting how truly tiny the amount is. By Volpson's own calculations, the total mass of all the data we produce each year is similar in size to that one one E. Coli bacterium. Even with rapid growth, many scientists believe that the scenario posed by Volpson is impossible, which means we probably don't have to worry that the massive size of Warzone updates will destroy the world.
One scientist, David Wolpert, a physicist at the Santa Fe Institute, explained away Volpson's hypothesis by pointing out that anything growing exponentially would take over the planet. He wrote that the "global woman's lingerie market is expanding at an ~ 9.4% annual rate... Extrapolating that to 500 years in the future ... we arrive at a figure of $3 x 10^19 US$, which would obviously ruin the world's economy." In other words, if you look at any thing that's growing, and expand its current growth rate into the future, you'll end up with an impossibly massive number. Fall Guys is currently selling record numbers, but that doesn't mean the world will one day be made up of little white guys in silly outfits.
Source: AIP Advances Journal