this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2025
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Top notch science journalism there.
This isn't a scientific journal or news paper. It's a main stream article by the BBC, intended to be consumed, and understood, by people who have zero knowledge of how computers, bits or binary numbers work, so I really don't see the issue here.
So what do bits represent then, if not ones and zeros?
Read that sentence again. They didn't say bits represent 0s and 1s, they said bits are represented BY 0s and 1s, which is entirely correct.
Physically speaking, in a modern silicon based PC, bits are the presence or absence of electrons in an electron well. That presence or absence is often represented by binary numbers, because it makes the math easy, though it can also be represented in other ways, such as "HI" and "LO". Or in a Boolean mathematics the bits would represent the values "True" and "False".
The statement from the article is entirely correct.
A bit isn't represented by a one or a zero, that's nonsense. A bit can take the state of a one or a zero and is represented in various ways in digital circuitry.
A bit IS represented by one or zero. A bit can take the state of charged or not charged. That's what a bit physically is. In low level code, those states are represented by binary numbers.
Or do you think there's a actual physical numbers 0 and 1 floating around in your RAM ?
The states represent binary numbers, not the other way around.
https://www.britannica.com/technology/bit-communications
A bit is a binary digit. That's what "bit" is an abbreviation for. That is, it's either a 1 or a 0. It's a logical thing, not a physical thing. It's a unit of information.
The embodiment of that bit is the physical state of a certain tiny, addressable chunk of silicon. And there could be any of several other embodiments: the position of toggle switches, chalk marks on a board, pits on a metallic surface in a DVD, voltage in a wire at a particular time. The particular embodiment is an engineering choice that is distinct from the information itself.