You could argue that the entire knowledge content of the 100s Petabytes of output from the LHC will be a single bit (indicating if the Higgs Boson was found).
Matthew
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:JISC-
> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Leslie Carr
> Sent: 16 September 2009 12:55
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: amount of academic data (was re:Digital Preservation - The
> Planets Way)
>
> On 16 Sep 2009, at 12:33, Andrew Treloar wrote:
>
> >> But as others have said, research data swamps the articles.
> >
> > And will increasingly do so. In fact, I can see a day when the size of
> > the entire journal literature will be a rounding error on the total
> > size of all research outputs. In some disciplines we are there
> > already.
>
> Lest we forget - size isn't everything. Journal papers are valuable precisely
> because they summarise scientific observations, turning Petabytes of data
> and information into a fraction of a megabyte of knowledge.
>
> Well, a fraction of a megabyte of PDF. Probably only a kilobyte of mathML.
> It's just the opposite of a picture being worth a thousand words :-)
> --
> Les
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