How much does a post on a forum weigh?

[raspberrypi]

If we found out how much energy it used to make a post then used E=MC^2 and factored in earth gravity how much would it weigh?

[Ian.M]

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

[Paul Moir]

Which is the answer to whether intelligence is physical.  :rolleyes:  #doesntunderstandwesterntradition

[Jeroen3]

Enjoying your legalized cannabis, aren't you?

These a pure philosophical questions. You can't weigh information.

[T3sl4co1l]

If it's stored in hard drive or Flash or DRAM, it's probably on the order of hundreds or thousands of perturbed electrons (stuck, in one way or another; magnetically in the HD, electrically in the memory).

The amount of energy associated with that change, times some kB for the size of a post*, is down in the nano or picojoules.  So, the relativistic mass change** will be very, very small indeed, in fact many orders of magnitude below the mass error that is inherent in a macroscopic clump of atoms: you physically cannot measure mass accurately enough (due to binding energy, temperature, internal disorder and so on) to be able to count the atoms!

*But should we also count the knock-on effects of updating the database so the post is linked into the system?  It may be in the 10s of kB, on a per-post basis.  Maybe a whole lot more, I have no idea...  Oh, and is this just in final storage, or are we counting the changes in all the intermediate caches too? Alright, nevermind...

**The mass doesn't really change, because on average, the system hasn't gained or lost much energy.  That is, given a compressed (looks like random noise!) data stream, the entropy is pretty much the same, for any input you might have.  It's about half ones and half zeroes!  Moreover, symmetrical systems (like the HD's magnetic bits) won't really store energy (the particles are magnetized regardless -- just in + or - directions).  Asymmetrical systems will, like memory (which holds a static electric field, or nothing).

Perhaps a more interesting theoretical question is, how much energy is needed?

We're something like 6 orders of magnitude away from the information-theoretic limit, which comes from the amount of energy needed to transition a (quantum) system from one state to another, in a finite time (comparable to modern clock rates).  And that limit is something like 10 orders of magnitude away from relativistically measurable information change [citation needed], so the concept of "relativistic information theory" is a very ponderous one, indeed.

Tim

[MK14]

If we found out how much energy it used to make a post then used E=MC^2 and factored in earth gravity how much would it weigh?

I suspect, that there is a probability of a particular forum post, getting printed out on paper (hard copy).

Example with hypothetical figures, as I don't know what the real figures are:

Probability of a forum post being printed is 1 in 10,000
Weight of a forum post printout (assuming it is printed onto a single page of A4) = 4.5 grams

So weight of each forum post = 4.5/10,000 = 0.00045 grams

I suspect that is the overriding weight of a post, compared to the electrons that flow, and magnetic disk changes (or SSD) etc.

So in very rough terms it might be one milligram per forum post.

N.B. Don't forget that a huge number of internet users, may print out, a particularly good/exceptional/useful post.

[Ampera]

For me, it weighs heavily on my conscience.

[RoGeorge]

It was posted just for fun, not that I'm agreeing with what he's saying.

[raspberrypi]

I found this one too:
https://youtu.be/Do1lm9IevYE
How much does a shadow weigh. How do I embed this into a youtube player within the post?

[GreyWoolfe]

How much does a henweigh?

[gibbled]

How much does a henweigh?

How long is a piece of string?

[Ampera]

How much does a henweigh?

How long is a piece of string?

How big is a bucket?

[MK14]

How much does a henweigh?

How long is a piece of string?

How big is a bucket?

if you half fill it.
Is it then half full or half empty ?

Or back on topic.
Does a 50 line post weigh double or at least a bit more, than a 25 line post (always 70 non-space chars per line, for all lines, to ensure accurate results) ?
Or does a 25 line and 50 line post, weigh the same ?

[Spuddevans]

How much does a henweigh?

How long is a piece of string?

How big is a bucket?

If you are digging a hole, and you stop half-way, do you have half a hole or a whole hole?

Tim

[timb]

How much does a henweigh?

How long is a piece of string?

How big is a bucket?

If you are digging a hole, and you stop half-way, do you have half a hole or a whole hole?

Tim

If you loose the whole thing, do you still have a tight whole or a lose hole?

[GreyWoolfe]

How much does a henweigh?

How long is a piece of string?

How big is a bucket?

If you are digging a hole, and you stop half-way, do you have half a hole or a whole hole?

Tim

If you loose the whole thing, do you still have a tight whole or a lose hole?

A hole stopped half way is still a whole hole but a half a hole compared to what's needed, all a matter of perspective.  Any part of the hole dug is still a whole hole regardless of how far along is the digging process you are.  I would never go for a loose hole, who really wants a loose hole, happiness is a tight hole.

have we  yet?

[slicendice]

If it's
.
.
.
indeed.

Tim

Best answer ever, love it! 
(read the full text, not my quote)

[Ampera]

How much does a henweigh?

How long is a piece of string?

How big is a bucket?

If you are digging a hole, and you stop half-way, do you have half a hole or a whole hole?

Tim

If you loose the whole thing, do you still have a tight whole or a lose hole?

A hole stopped half way is still a whole hole but a half a hole compared to what's needed, all a matter of perspective.  Any part of the hole dug is still a whole hole regardless of how far along is the digging process you are.  I would never go for a loose hole, who really wants a loose hole, happiness is a tight hole.

have we  yet?

no.

How smart is a smart guy?

[4cx10000]

Of course a single character weighs less than two! As an example: if you write a single post on a forum it all depends on how many characters a message contain with chosen font face, font size, bold or not and finally how fast you write. When it comes to writing speed it gets quite complicated!! To high speed often causes what called pixel losses and therefore less weight per character and that's good. Using PS2 keyboard will help a lot but an USB 3 - less pixel losses - causes big stress on the server because of full weight characters and could, in worst case, cause a serious weight phenomena and at the end, a severe server crash... 

[hans]

As this is a purely rhetorical  question, let's weigh forum posts on their storage medium. We could calculate the mass of information by relating it to the media storage density and physical mass.

Let me kick off with a traditional HDD platter: http://superuser.com/questions/11423/how-much-does-a-gigabyte-worth-of-data-physically-weigh-on-a-hard-disk?answertab=votes#tab-top

1GB weighs 0.617 ugram, then 1 byte weighs 0.575 femto gram (10^-15).
E=mc^2, it is about 51.7 Joules of material per byte.

If we consider 1 post taking ~1 byte of text up to a couple of MB including pictures, you could argue that 1 post weighs maybe a few pico or nano grams.
This is of course excluding harddrive casing, electronics, etc. but that's harder to quantify considering 2.5" and 3.5" form factor drives.

In fact, the harddrive will probably way just as much as without forum posts on it. So.. great to know these calculations were meaningless.

[Tom45]

This thread reminds me of a story I heard long ago.

A software developer in the aerospace industry was under fire from a boss because he hadn't submitted a weight budget for his part of the project. His response was that software has no weight. The boss picked up a deck of punched cards on his desk and said look at this, of course it has weight. The programmer's response: but we just use the holes.