Say hello to ronnagrams and quettameters: International scientists gathered in France voted on Friday to find metric prefixes to describe the largest and smallest measurements in the world, with the help of a growing amount of data.
It is the first time in three decades that new characters have been added to the International System of Units (SI), the globally agreed upon metric system.
Joining the ranks of well-known prefixes such as kilo and milli and ronna and quetta for the largest numbers – and ronto and quecto for the smallest.
The change was voted on by scientists and representatives from around the world attending the 27th General Conference on Weights and Measures, which governs the SI and meets about every four years at Versailles Palace, west of Paris.
The UK’s National Physical Laboratory, which led the push for the new labels, confirmed that the decision was made verbally.
Prefixes make it easier to express information – for example, always referring to a kilometer as 1,000 meters or a millimeter as one-thousandth of a meter can quickly become complicated.
Since SI was established in 1960, scientific interest has led to a proliferation of prefixes. The last time was in 1991, when chemists wanted to explain the number of molecules that stimulated the addition of zetta and yotta.
A yottameter is one followed by 24 zeros.
But even one iota of energy is not enough to satisfy the world’s thirst for knowledge, according to Richard Brown, head of metrology at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory.
“In terms of expressing information in yottabytes, which is very basic at the moment, we are very close,” Mr Brown told AFP.
“In the end, it makes sense to have the same size, which is useful for quantum science, particle physics – when you’re experimenting with really, really small things.”
The new wealth of the world
New prefixes can simplify the way we talk about very large things.
“If we think about mass, instead of distance, the Earth weighs about six grammes,” which is six followed by 27 zeros, Brown said.
“Jupiter, that’s about two quettagrams,” he added – two followed by 30 zeros.
Brown said he had the idea for the change when he saw media reports using unofficial prefixes for data storage such as brontobytes and hellabytes. Google has been using hella on bytes since 2010.
“These were words that were not well known, so it was clear that the SI had to do something about it,” he said.
However metric prefixes must be shortened to their first letter – and B and H had already been taken, producing bronto and hella.
“The only letters that weren’t used for other units or symbols were R and Q,” Brown said.
The convention says that uppercase letters end in A, and lowercase in O.
And “the middle of the word is very loosely based on the Greek and Latin of the 9th and 10th,” Brown said.
The new prefixes should “future-proof the system” and meet the global demand for higher numbers – at least for the next 20 to 25 years, he added.
© Agence France-Presse
