Real clouds hold more droplets than the internet cloud holds bits
About 238 septillion droplets float overhead, outnumbering roughly 1,900 sextillion bits, even though a bit is the smallest possible piece of information.
The Rest Is Science · Are There More Raindrops In Clouds Or Data In THE Cloud?There are more droplets of water floating in the sky than bits of data stored in the internet cloud.
All the clouds combined hold about 1,000 cubic kilometers of water and ice. That would fit in a block about 10 kilometers on each side, but it is just a tiny sliver of the water in the atmosphere and an even tinier sliver of Earth's fresh water.
The count gets huge because cloud droplets are tiny, about 20 microns across, or about 100 times narrower than a two-millimeter raindrop. That works out to about 238 septillion droplets suspended overhead at any moment, compared with 2.38 times 10 to the 20th raindrops falling as rain.
By comparison, the internet cloud holds an estimated 240 zettabytes, or 240 sextillion bytes, equal to about 1,900 sextillion bits. Since a septillion is a thousand times larger than a sextillion, water wins and, as Michael Stevens, who runs the Vsauce channel, put it, "Mother Nature is still beating us."
Questions people ask
How big is a zettabyte?
A zettabyte is one sextillion bytes, or a one followed by 21 zeros. A byte itself is eight bits, and a bit is a single one or zero, so 240 zettabytes equals about 240 sextillion bytes, or about 1,900 sextillion bits.
Why don't cloud droplets fall right away?
They are so small that they stay aloft until they merge. Only when droplets bump into each other and grow into drops about 100 times wider do they become too heavy to float and fall as rain.
Does that droplet count include rain and water vapor?
No. The 238 septillion figure counts only the tiny suspended droplets that make up clouds. On top of that, a Reddit calculation cited in the episode estimates about 5.4 quadrillion larger drops are falling as rain at any moment, plus there is vastly more water as vapor gas throughout the atmosphere.