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 impending ‘information catastrophe’.
By 2170, the world will be ‘mostly computer simulated and dominated by digital bits and computer code’, the study claims.
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 the 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, according to the report.
Bits are the basic unit of information that power computing and digital communications, including streaming services such as Netflix.
IBM estimates that the present rate of digital content production is about 20 quintillion digital bits every day, with as much as 90 per cent of the world’s data created in the last 10 years alone.
In 2019, Dr Melvin Vopson at the University of Portsmouth formulated the principle that information is not just an abstract mathematical entity, but a ‘physical, dominant, fifth state of matter’.
Digital bits are not the generally accepted ‘fifth state of matter’ – a title that is usually given to Bose–Einstein condensate.
Dr Vopson argues that digital bits have their own mass and energy, although this principle ‘still awaits an experimental verification’.
‘Assuming it is correct, it opens up interesting possibilities with wide ranging implications for computing technologies, physics and cosmology,’ he said.
At present, the total mass of all the information we produce yearly on Earth 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.
Assuming a conservative annual growth of digital content creation of 1 per cent, Vopson worked out that it would 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.
However, in an extreme scenario, in which our digital information production growth is consistently around 50 per year, there will be 1kg of digital bits on the planet by 2070, exploding to equal half the Earth’s mass by 2245.
Under the 50 per cent scenario, 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 the number of bits would equal the number of atoms on Earth within approximately 150 years.
Dr Vopson warns that an impending limit on the number of bits, the energy to produce them and the distribution of physical and digital mass could ultimately 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.’
Assuming the current growth trends in digital content continue, the world will eventually 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.
‘The digital information production alone will consume most of the planetary power capacity, leading to ethical and environmental concerns,’ the study author says.
‘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’s theory 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 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.’
The study has been published in AIP Advances.