New research suggests that the world could be heading for an information disaster as the rate of growth of digital bits continues to increase.
In a new study, researcher Melvin Vopson of the University of Portsmouth in the UK predicts that our ever-growing virtual stock of digital information can have dramatic, unforeseen consequences for terrestrial matter.
The amount of data is growing rapidly
“We’re literally changing the planet bit by bit, and it’s an invisible crisis,”
To understand Vopson’s latest ideas, it is worth mentioning the theoretical construction he proposed last year, called the principle of mass-energy-information equivalence.
According to Vopson’s ideas and theoretical calculations, the weight of the storage device would increase by a small amount when retrieving digital information. This theoretical weight gain would be small, says Vopson, but still significant and measurable.
However, Vopson’s idea has not yet been experimentally verified. However, the scientist himself has now published a new document examining some of the hypothetical future consequences if his theoretical principle proves to be true.
First, Vopson works with IBM estimates that approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes of digital data are produced on Earth each day, which is approximately 1,021 digital bits of information per year.
If the amount of digital content we make increases by 20 percent a year, Vopson calculates that in about 350 years, the number of digital bits produced will exceed the number of all atoms on Earth.
But before we get to this point, the energy consumption needed to sustain all digital information production would be greater than the current planet. But that’s not all.
If we take into account the principle of mass-energy-information equivalence, this amount of digital information will have a huge impact on quantity, not just energy.
Some calculations are alarming – information disaster is creeping slowly
When we enter a higher growth rate, such as 5 percent, 20 percent or 50 percent, these numbers become extreme. For example, with 50% growth per year, digital content would represent half the mass of the entire planet in just 225 years.
This is fascinating thinking, and Vopson hopes that his ideas will stimulate further theoretical and experimental research that may bring us closer to answering some of these questions.
“Because both special relativity and Landauer’s principle have proven to be correct, it is highly likely that the new principle will also prove to be correct,” Vopson told Inverse.
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