In today’s world, data and measurements are constantly increasing, and our units of measure to express them have been insufficient for some time. International scientists meeting in France to express the world’s largest and smallest measurements identified the new metric prefixes: ronna, quetta, ronto, and quecto.For the first time in over three decades, new prefixes have been added to the International System of Units (SI), the agreed global standard for the metric system. The suffixes ronna and quetta will be used for the largest numbers, and the suffixes ronto and quecto will be used for the smallest numbers, thus increasing the number of familiar prefixes such as kilo and milli.
The change was adopted by scientists and government representatives from around the world who run the SI and attend the 27th General Conference on Weights and Measures, which meets roughly every four years at the Palace of Versailles, west of Paris.
The new weight of the world
New prefixes could simplify how we talk about some pretty large objects. “If we consider mass rather than distance, the Earth weighs about six ronnagrams,” said Richard Brown of the UK’s National Physical Laboratory. So, that’s six followed by 27 zeros (6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). Jupiter weighs about 2 quettagrams.
The new prefixes are expected to “future the system” and meet the world’s need for higher numbers for at least the next 20 to 25 years. On the other hand, prefixes and units also facilitate interdisciplinary communication.
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