DISCLAIMER: No planets were harmed in making this blog. The distances to the planets were rounded and averaged based on close/far orbits. But this information about distances were taken from (Nasa.gov) and and it is assumed by me to be the most accurate info. The rest of the calculations are mine if not otherwise specified. The information is just for entertainment, Although Amazon might have the required number of punch cards (Not!) don’t try to put the number of punch cards necessary, one on top of another to prove the theory or the calculations, as this would not be good for the planet.
Comic Randall Munroe did an approximation and he came up with Google storing about 10 Exabytes (Of course give or take an exabyte or two 🙂 His answer to this question was in terms of “5km of cards covering the entire region of the New England…”. What kind of answer is that? So as Tim the Tool man Taylor would say, ” I rewired it…”
After my calculations (If you feel the urge, you can see all the calculations below, I have everything written there for geeks that proofread the document that comes out of the photocopy machine. Yeah I’m an Engineer so what?). As I was saying, after all my calculations, we would need to stack computer punch cards from here to:
So, for 10 Exabytes, we need 80,966,841,812.5 km high stack of the old computer punch cards put one on top of another. This translates to:
 210,631 times the distance to the Moon |
Just an FYI, Distance to the Sun and other planets:
- 540 times the distance to the Sun (80,966,841,812.5/150 Million)
- 880 times the distance to Mercury (80,966,841,812.5/92 million)
- 1928 times the distance to Venus (80,966,841,812.5/42 million)
- 1038 times the distance to Mars (80,966,841,812.5/78 million)
- 129 times the distance to Jupiter (80,966,841,812.5/628 million)
- 65 times the distance to Saturn (80,966,841,812.5/1.25 Billion)
- 29 times the distance to Uranus (80,966,841,812.5/2.75 Billion)
- 18.6 times the distance to Neptune (80,966,841,812.5/4.35 Billion)
- 14 times the distance to Pluto (80,966,841,812.5/5.75 billion)
| Let’s look at the calculations and the sources of data | |
| Let’s try to make sense of this in real measurements of height and distance.Here is what an Exabyte is: 1.1529215 × 1018 bytes Of course 10 Exabytes would just be: 1.1529215 × 1019 bytes If each shoe box of punch cards could contain 2000 cards (Randall’s estimation) then each box can basically hold 160kb. |
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MadSci Library says, “… it would take 9,544,372 punch cards to make a gigabyte. So to fill up your 20Gb hard drive, it would take over 190 million punch cards.” Let’s translate this to 2TB hard drives, I’m sure Google hasn’t bought the vintage 20GB hard drives. This means it would take 5,242,880 2TB hard drives to hold 10 Exabytes of data. It takes 102.4 individual 20GB hard drives to hold the data in a 2TB hard drive.So let’s do the math, it’s simple:
Then it takes 190,000,000×102.4×5,242,880= 1.0200547e+17 cards to store the information that’s in 10 Exabytes, Wowwww! |
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Distance to the moon (From the rock we’re standing on) is approximately 384,400km as an average (Of course the actual distance varies because the orbit is not the same over time, it varies between 363,000km and 405,000km approx) But 384,400km is close enough.
The thickness of punch cards is approximately 1/32″=.03125″=.79375mm=.079375cm=.00079375m=7.9375e-7km This means there are 1,259,842.52 punch cards per km of distance or height. and the moon is 384,400km so lets do the math again:
It takes 1,259,842.52X384,400=484,283,464,688 cards to reach the moon.
To sum it up and calculate:
1.0200547e+17 punch cards to store 10 exabytes
484,283,464,688 Cards to reach the moon
1.0200547e+17/484,283,464,688= 210,631 times the distance to the moon.
Let’s look at how far this is to other planets, because they have uneven orbits, we will consider their closest points (That should take care of the anal retentive among you)
So, for 10 Exabytes, we need 80,966,841,812.5 km high of cards put one on top of another. That translates to:
- 540 times the distance to the Sun (80,966,841,812.5/150 Million)
- 880 times the distance to Mercury (80,966,841,812.5/92 million)
- 1928 times the distance to Venus (80,966,841,812.5/42 million)
- 1038Â times the distance to Mars (80,966,841,812.5/78 million)
- 129 times the distance to Jupiter (80,966,841,812.5/628 million)
- 65Â times the distance to Saturn (80,966,841,812.5/1.25 Billion)
- 29Â times the distance to Uranus (80,966,841,812.5/2.75 Billion)
- 18.6 times the distance to Neptune (80,966,841,812.5/4.35 Billion)
- 14Â times the distance to Pluto (80,966,841,812.5/5.75 billion)
And this is if we stack them one on top of another, not end to end. If we were to put them end to end, then you would need to multiply everything by 236 times because the thickness of each card is 1/32″ but the length of each card is 7.375″ long. I chose to stack them one on top of another because if we ever wanted to prove the experiment, of course it is impossible to put them at length one after the other, but we could, theoretically, stack them one on top of another. Hey, it’s my blog and I say we can.
Info used from Nasa.gov
Distances from earth
Sun is 150 km,
Mercury is 92 million km,
Venus is 42 million km,
Mars is 78 million km,
Jupiter is 628 million km,
Saturn is 1.25 Billion km,
Uranus is 2.75 Billion km,
Neptune is 4.35 Billion km
Pluto is 5.75 billion km.
Distances of planets from the Sun
Earth 150 million km
Mercury is 58 million km,
Venus is 108 million km,
Mars is 228 million km,
Jupiter is 778 million km,
Saturn is 1.4 Billion km,
Uranus is 2.9 Billion km,
Neptune is 4.5 Billion km
Pluto is 5.9 billion km.