vania: Welcome.
Yes, of course it's possible, but it's useless.
Well, it's easy to convert a 16bits to 8bits and keep its file size. If your image is say : 1000 x 1000 x 16bit, convert it to 8bits, then you can either change its canvas to 1000 x 2000 or add 3 channels ( or 4 if your image is in CMYK ) to your image. And voilà you just wasted 20Mb.
More seriously, in 16bits each channel have a precision of 2 ^16 = 65536 tones, while in 8bits its 2 ^ 8 = 256 tones. Once you convert a 16bits picture to 8bits it's NORMAL that the file size is divided by 2 since you go from 2 bytes to 1 byte per channel.
(Edited by poi on 06-12-2004 13:57)