Earth now weighs six ronnagrams:
Say hello to ronnagrams and quettametres: International scientists gathered in France voted on Friday for new metric prefixes to express the world's largest and smallest measurements, prompted by an ever-growing amount of data.
It marks the first time in more than three decades that new prefixes have been added to the International System of Units (SI), the agreed global standard for the metric system.
Joining the ranks of well-known prefixes like kilo and milli are ronna and quetta for the largest numbers -- and ronto and quecto for the smallest.
The change was voted on by scientists and government representatives from across the world attending the 27th General Conference on Weights and Measures, which governs the SI and meets roughly every four years at Versailles Palace, west of Paris.
[...] Brown said he had the idea for the update when he saw media reports using unsanctioned prefixes for data storage such as brontobytes and hellabytes. Google in particular has been using hella for bytes since 2010.
[...] The new prefixes should "future proof the system" and satisfy the world's need for higher numbers -- at least for the next 20 to 25 years, he added.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday November 20 2022, @03:10AM (2 children)
I can't wait for my quettaflops mini-computer with a ronnabyte of universal memory (no cap, fr fr).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Quantities_of_bytes [wikipedia.org]
The binary prefixes will be handled by different organizations. I expect robi- and maybe quibi- (R.I.P. [soylentnews.org]).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#IEC_prefixes [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2022, @07:02AM
That'll be standard issue with your new Confederation starter pack. Now stand to attention for the CAPTAIN, maggot!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2022, @04:50PM
I figure you would be excited because now you can better express your favorite traveling speed.