The sum total of human knowledge is about 300 Exabytes!
Researchers, lead by Martin Hilbert, have recently released a paper outlining the extent of human knowledge, and here's a shockers: We know a lot of stuff! They calculated the vast sums of human knowledge and attempted to condense that into simple electronic memory. In the same way you can calculate how many files (songs...) will fit in 8gigs (like an iPod) for example, they have calculated the total size of human knowledge.
"Looking at both digital memory and analog devices, the researchers calculate that humankind is able to store at least 295 exabytes of information." For those of you that don't know base-ten decimal number nomenclature, or who don't know Greek prefixes (that's two-hundred and ninety five quintillion BTW), that number looks like this:
29 500 000 000 000 000 000 000 gigabytes!
(For the audiophiles that's about 4.42500 × 10^24 songs on your iPod)
Now obviously there doesn't exist 4.4 septillion songs in the history of man's existence, so you might want to try adding some videos in the mix...
So there you have it, we know quite a lot, and it's even arguable that we have only recently passed into the digital age.
"2002 could be considered the beginning of the digital age, the first year worldwide digital storage capacity overtook total analog capacity. As of 2007, almost 94 percent of our memory is in digital form," says Martin. Read more about his research here.
Cheers to incredibly unbelievable numbers that represent everything we've ever known.
-D-
[Physorg]
So there you have it, we know quite a lot, and it's even arguable that we have only recently passed into the digital age.
"2002 could be considered the beginning of the digital age, the first year worldwide digital storage capacity overtook total analog capacity. As of 2007, almost 94 percent of our memory is in digital form," says Martin. Read more about his research here.
Cheers to incredibly unbelievable numbers that represent everything we've ever known.
-D-
[Physorg]
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