VoIP weighs in at 0.008 millionth of an ounce

Despite taking up a growing burden of the world's communications, VoIP is not weighed down by the workload, according to one analyst.

Instead the nearly 110 billion minutes of VoIP calls in 2006 weighed in at just 0.008 millionth of an ounce.

ZDNet analyst Russell Shaw made the "admittedly back-of-the-envelope" calculations to find out the weight of the electrons needed to support the charge in computer chips to carry the VoIP conversations across the internet.

Finding inspiration from a Discover magazine article discussing how much the internet weighs, Mr Shaw came to his rough figure through a complex series of estimations and calculations.

Among the baffling equations and computations along the way include the daunting: "One electron weighs 2x to the minus 30 per pound, so a 50-kilobyte email weighs about two ten-thousands of a quadrillionth of an ounce".

Quite what purpose Mr Shaw hoped to serve, other than his own curiosity, is unclear. But it somehow feels oddly reassuring that someone is keeping a check on these things…