Less than one percent of the information that is stored in the DNA of a single human being

From Welcome to the information age - 174 newspapers a day by Richard Alleyne.

The researchers, who reported their findings in the journal Science, found that there was now 295 exabytes of data floating around the world - that's 29,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 pieces of information.

While this is enormous - 315 times the number of grains of sand on Earth - Dr Hilbert points out it is still less than one percent of the information that is stored in the DNA of a single human being.

The ability to process all this information with computers has doubled every 18 months and with telecommunication devices has doubled every two years.

But despite it showing enormous growth, Dr Hilbert said we are far from saturation point and nowhere near dealing with the amount of information contended with in the natural world.

Dr Martin Hilbert, of the University of California, said: "These numbers are impressive, but still miniscule compared to the order of magnitude at which nature handles information."

"Compared to nature, we are but humble apprentices. If we tried to store the name of every star in the Universe we could only file one per cent."