The number of digital bits will overtake the number of atoms on Earth within 150 years, according to a new study that warns of an ‘information catastrophe’.
By 2170, the world will be ‘mostly computer simulated and dominated by digital bits and computer code’ to power humanity’s reliance on technology, the study warns.
There will be 133 quindecillion (133 followed by 48 zeroes) bits in existence – the same as the estimated number of atoms on the planet.
However, the power needed to support information transfer will equal all the power currently produced on Earth, leading to ethical and environmental concerns’.
Digital content is also on track to equal half Earth’s mass – approximately 6,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000 (6 x 10 to the power of 24) kilograms – by the year 2245.
Vopson wants to experimentally verify that information bits have mass, which he extrapolated to forecast in 225 years will be half of Earth’s mass
And in an extreme case scenario when our digital information production growth is consistently around 50 per year, there will be 1kg of digital bits content on the planet stored on cloud data storage centres, endpoints such as PCs, smartphones and IoT devices by just 2070.
Bits are the basic unit of information that power computing and digital communications, including streaming services such as Netflix.
As much as 90 per cent of the world’s data today has been created in the last 10 years alone and information is now a ‘physical, dominant, fifth state of matter’.
Information moves between states of mass and energy just like other matter and is therefore a physical entity, the researcher argues – but it could cause ‘an invisible crisis’.
An impending limit on the number of bits, the energy to produce them and the distribution of physical and digital mass will overwhelm the planet.
‘We are literally changing the planet bit by bit, and it is an invisible crisis,’ said author Dr Melvin Vopson at the University of Portsmouth.
‘The growth of digital information seems truly unstoppable.
‘In some ways, the current Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated this process as more digital content is used and produced than ever before.’
Humanity is using coal, oil, natural gas, copper, silicon and aluminium to power data centres and computer server ‘farms’ to process digital information.
Natural resources such as coal, oil and natural gas power computer servers that process huge amounts of digital information to sustain services like Netflix and Facebook
But technological progress is redistributing Earth’s matter from physical atoms to digital information, creating what Dr Vopson describes as the fifth state of matter, behind liquid, solid, gas and plasma.
In 2019, Vopson formulated a principle suggesting information moves between states of mass and energy just like other matter and is not just an abstract mathematical entity.
‘The mass-energy-information equivalence principle builds on these concepts and opens up a huge range of new physics, especially in cosmology,’ he said.
‘When one brings information content into existing physical theories, it is almost like an extra dimension to everything in physics.’
Assuming the current growth trends in digital content continue, the world will reach a singularity, Dr Vopson says.
This ‘information catastrophe’ will mark the point at which the maximum possible digital information has been created, as well as the maximum power at which to sustain it.
Demand will match atoms on the planet, which the US Department of Energy’s Jefferson Lab estimates to be 133 quindecillion (133 followed by 48 zeroes). Atoms can join together to form molecules, which in turn form most of the objects around us
IBM estimates that the present rate of digital content production is about 2.5 quintillion digital data bytes (with one byte consisting of eight bits) produced every day on Earth.
The total mass of all the information we produce yearly on Earth at present is ‘extremely insignificant’ and impossible to notice – about 1,000 billion times smaller than the mass of single grain of rice, or about the mass of one E.coli bacteria.
However, the production of digital information is rapidly increasing every year, so the researcher wanted to estimate the total information mass after a certain number of years at various growth rates.
Using current data storage densities, he worked out the number of bits produced per year and the size of a bit compared to the size of an atom.
At a rate of 50 per cent annual growth, the number of bits would equal the number of atoms on Earth in approximately 150 years.
It would be approximately 130 years until the power needed to sustain digital information creation would equal all the power currently produced on planet Earth, and by 2245, half of Earth’s mass would be converted to digital information mass.
Assuming a conservative annual growth of digital content creation of 1 per cent, it will take around 3,150 years to produce the first cumulative 1kg of digital information mass on the planet.
It would also around 8,800 years to convert half of the planet’s mass into digital information mass.
It’s when growth rates of 5 per cent, 20 per cent and 50 per cent are considered that growth rates ‘become extreme’.
According to the researcher, ‘one could envisage a future world mostly computer simulated and dominated by digital bits and computer code’
‘The digital information production alone will consume most of the planetary power capacity, leading to ethical and environmental concerns,’ the study authors say.
‘These issues are valid regardless of the future developments in data storage technologies.
‘Our technological progress inverts radically the distribution of the Earth’s matter from predominantly ordinary matter, to the fifth form of digital information matter.
‘In this context, assuming the planetary power limitations are solved, one could envisage a future world mostly computer simulated and dominated by digital bits and computer code.’
Vopson draws on the mass-energy equivalence in Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, the work of German physicist Rolf Landauer, who applied the laws of thermodynamics to information, and the work of American mathematician Claude Shannon, the inventor of the digital bit.
The study has been published in AIP Advances.