Does data have mass? interesting

https://www.sciencealert.com/physicist-claims-information-has-mass-and-might-be-considered-a-state-of-matter

Well, data takes up space, whether it is written on paper or code, and this data needs to be stored somewhere, otherwise it is not data...

Hence, data has mass... Load image: sick

Yet light can carry information and has no mass.

This is true, photons have no mass... Load image: sick

Interesting topic indeed, bullshit reporting however..

Going into the actual research paper it just misrepresents the actual paper.
Happens a shitload in science reporting, the lost in translation to make it appealing for laymen.

Mike McRae is a part-time Journalist at ScienceAlert. He has been telling science stories in one form or another

That form looks like some fiction to me

Well most of op's data is just hot air, so it might actually take mass away from the earth.

The news report indeed is bs, but the original article is intetersting, even though theoretical physics is not my strongest area :)

But anyway, just to clarify some misconceptions, the data in this case means specifically digital data, not written or any other kind of information. And the reasoning behind the digitally stored data having mass is based on particle physics, quarks and other elementary particles, their intrisically contained information and what they emit and don't emit when they combine and so on.

So if you understand particle physics, go ahead and read the article. You will most likely understand more about it than I did :)

Here's the link for the original article: https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0087175