How much data storage does /qa/ think we'd need to create a perfect replica of a human and store it onto a computer? My initial guess was about 10^27 bytes just going based off the estimated amount of atoms in the human body but with a bit more thought I realized that's probably an underestimate given you need to account for the neutrons/positrons/electrons of each atom, and even then maybe accounting for the subatomic atoms matter too.

My curiosity over this comes from the thought that maybe in the future once we're able to store a human inside of a machine we'll be finally able to open up a wide range of possibilities for research into the body. Consider if we did this, maybe we could actually conduct human experimentation without any actual physical humans being harmed in the process. You could copy yourself into the net to have your presence never die. Potentially through this you'd be able to have the most immersive sims around too. Although maybe for some of these the actual requirements of what we'd need mapped in the human body is far less than something like every atom.

In any case though, I wonder if this could even be possible given the massive amounts of storage one would need to pull it off probably makes this infeasible. Do you think we'll keep rapidly growing in terms of tech evolution so that the amount of data we can hold will be enough to store a person on? Or are we at/nearing the limits of what we can do?