Officials have designated brand-new prefixes that can be applied to units of measurement within the metric system for the first time in more than three decades. Four new prefixes, ronna, ronto, quetta, and quecto, will enable scientists to quantify the universe’s largest and smallest objects.

Scientists voted on the new prefixes at the 27th meeting of the General Conference on Weights and Measures (GCWM), which took place in 2022 from November 15 to November 18 at Versailles Palace near Paris in France. According to the CIA, the new terms are part of the International System of Units, also known as the metric system, which is the primary measurement system for every country in the world except Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States, which all use the imperial system of measurement (opens in new tab).

STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/ AFP/ Getty Images |

The new prefixes can be applied to any of the metric system’s seven base units: grams (g) for weight, meters (m) for distance, seconds (s) for time, amps (A) for electrical current, kelvin (K) for temperature, moles (mol) for substance amount, and candela (cd) for luminosity, as well as other units such as bytes for computing.

The new prefixes ronna and quetta refer to large numbers, while ronto and quecto refer to small numbers. Quetta is a 1, followed by 30 zeroes, and Ronna is a 1, followed by 27 zeroes. Ronto is 10-27, while quecto is 10-30.

More details

The conference meets in Versailles every four years and is in charge of the International System of Units, which is the running list of metric system units. A list of all the metric prefixes, including the four new additions, can be found here. The additions are the list’s first additions since 1991.

Deposi Photo/ Getty Images | The General Conference on Weights and Measures added the prefixes “ronna” and “quetta” in November 2022

According to Richard Brown, the laboratory’s director, Earth weighs about 6 ronnagrams and Jupiter weighs about 2 quettagrams. According to naming conventions, prefixes indicating larger numbers end in ‘a’ (such as ‘giga’), while prefixes indicating smaller numbers end in ‘o’ (such as ‘nano’). Brown explained that the prefix additions were inspired in part by media reports that used unofficial units such as brontobyes and hellabytes for data storage, indicating a need for more extreme numbers.

These new prefixes should keep us going for a few years. We can only speculate on the innovations that would necessitate names other than quetta and quecto.

Metric update

Remon/ Getty Images | These terms are the equivalent of a quadrillion terabytes and a quintillion terabytes, respectively

According to Richard Brown, the laboratory’s director, Earth weighs about 6 ronnagrams and Jupiter weighs about 2 quettagrams. According to naming conventions, prefixes indicating larger numbers end in ‘a’ (such as ‘giga’), while prefixes indicating smaller numbers end in ‘o’ (such as ‘nano’). Brown explained that the prefix additions were inspired in part by media reports that used unofficial units such as brontobyes and hellabytes for data storage, indicating a need for more extreme numbers.

These new prefixes should keep us going for a few years. We can only speculate on the innovations that would necessitate names other than quetta and quecto.

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