HQ Team
November 21, 2021:As the world amasses humungous digital data, a need has arisen for added measurement units to keep up with the ever-expanding data.
Scientists gathered at the 27th General Conference on Weights and Measures announced on Nov. 18, four new prefixes to the International System of Units, or metric system: ronna (27 zeroes after the first digit) and quetta (30 zeroes), which will measure the largest range, and ronto (27 zeroes after the decimal point) and quecto (30 zeroes), which will denote the smallest.
“Most people are familiar with prefixes like milli- as in milligram,” Richard Brown, head of metrology at the U.K.’s National Physical Laboratory who proposed the four new prefixes, told The Associated Press. “But these [new additions] are prefixes for the biggest and smallest levels ever measured.”
The last time new prefixes were added to the measurement units was in 1991 when zetta and yotta were added to measure the molecular quantities.
A yottameter is one followed by 24 zeroes. The prefixes for small numbers (ronto and quecto) will be useful for quantum science and particle physics, the NPL said. An electron’s mass can be said to be about 1 rontogram rather than 0.001 yoctograms (the smallest prefix before the new additions).
The larger prefix will simplify how we measure big objects. Using mass instead of the distance then we can say the Earth weighs around 6 ronnagrams. ( 6 followed by 27 zeroes). Jupiter would be 2 quettagrams. ( a two followed by 30 zeroes).
“The change was largely driven by the growing requirements of data science and digital storage, which is already using prefixes at the top of the existing range (yottabytes and zettabytes, for expressing huge quantities of digital information),” the National Physical Laboratory said in a statement.
The International Data Corporation says that the world would have generated about 175 zettabytes (21 zeroes) of data by 2025.
The prefixes for small numbers (ronto and quecto) will be useful for quantum science and particle physics, the NPL said. An electron’s mass can be said to be about 1 rontogram rather than 0.001 yoctograms (the smallest prefix before the new additions).
Another reason for the measurement updates was because of the unsanctioned use of prefixes for data storage such as brontobytes and hellabytes. Google in particular has been using hella for bytes since 2010.
“Those were terms that were unofficially in circulation, so it was clear that the SI had to do something,” Brown said.
.”R” and “Q” represent ronna and quetta while “r” and “q” represent ronto and quecto. Brown told The Associated Press these letters were chosen because they were not already in use by other prefixes.
Convention dictates that the larger prefixes end in an A, and the smaller ones in an O. The scientists are hopeful that the new measurement prefixes will be able to hold the weight of the new data for another 20 to 30 years.