use Perl

"In the process the computer cranked out 20 terabytes of data, or enough to fill around one thousand iPods."

A kiloPod? (yes, technically 1024 iPods) I remember when we used to express computer storage by how many copies of the Bible it could fit.

So how many Bibles in an iPod?

Well, a plain text edition of the KJV from Project Gutenburg runs 5 megs (!) which is bigger than I thought. I always figured a Bible cranked in at about a meg. Probably PG isn't being as fastidious about space as we were 20 years ago. Anyhow, its my yardstick and I'm sticking to it.

If 1 Bible == 5 megs and 1 Pod == 20 gigs then 1 Pod == 4 kiloBibles.

So a computer simulation of the universe == 1 kiloPod == 4 megaBibles.

megaBibles!

Now if you want to do a side-by-side comparison of the efficiency of the Bible vs scientists you can look at their universe creation simulation (20 terabytes) and the Bible's (Genesis 1:1 - 2:4. Not including Adam here since the scientists didn't model evolution) which runs about 5K.

1 Bible == 1 kiloGenesis1 then a computer simulation of the creation of the universe == 1 kiloPod == 4 megaBibles == 4 gigaGenesis1! Leading to the inescapable conclusion that the Bible is the most efficient compression algorithm known to man! I'll be publishing my results in a best selling book. Also the world will end on January 12th, 2165.

Edit: Thanks to jmm for noting that I'd skipped the "kilo" bracket. I really shouldn't be doing math before noon.