At the 27th meeting of the General Conference on Weights and Measures, CGPM (for its acronym in English), new prefixes were defined that will form part of the International System of Units. These are the prefixes ronna, ronto, quetta and quecto, which will be used to express massive units and others that are quite tiny.
The prefixes ronna, ronto, quetta and quecto are added 31 years (1991) after the prefixes zetta (10^21), yotta (10^24), zepto (10^-21) and yocto (10^-24) have been added ).
The implementation of these new prefixes arises from the overwhelming amount of data that is generated on the Internet every day, since the prefixes that had been used up to now, such as kilobytes, megabytes and terabytes, are no longer sufficient to express the information that already exists and that which is about to be generated on the network.
Ronna and Quetta, for large quantities
The R will symbolize the ronna prefix, with which the numbers whose first digit is followed by 27 zeros will be described. It could be understood as: 10^27/ ronna /R
For its part, the quetta prefix will be symbolized Q and will refer to the numbers whose first digit is followed by 30 zeros. It has been described as: 10^30/ quetta / Q
Ronto and quecto, the side of tiny amounts
Ronto will be symbolized by r and will refer to numbers in which there are 27 zeros before the decimal point. It is explained as: 10^-27/ ronto / r
Quecto, represented by q, will be used to refer to numbers in which 30 zeros precede the decimal point. It is explained as: 10^-30/ quecto / q
Examples to understand the new CGPM prefixes
It may not be so quick to get an idea of the new measures at first, but to better understand them, The Washington Post took some examples from planet Earth:
The approximate weight of the planet earth in grams is 5,974,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 5.974×10^27.
According to the endings of the current metric system, this figure would be equivalent to 5.974×10^24 kilograms, 5.974×1021 megagrams, or simply 5.974 ronnagrams. Another example cited is that of measuring a planet with a weight of 8×10^30 grams, which would refer to a planet that weighs 8 quettagrams.
As an example of tiny units, it is explained that to refer to something as tiny as 3×10^-27 or 6×10^-30, one would be talking about rontometers or 6 quectometers.
Next measures to be defined by the CGPM
During the conference in which the CGPM defined these new prefixes, it was agreed that for the 28th meeting, to be held in 2026, there would be proposals to define what a second is equal to, a definition that is expected to be adopted at the 29th CGPM meeting, which will be held in 2030.
This agreement is part of the future plans of the CGPM to unify all measures globally, especially those that are to measure time.
These new units arise from the need for data science to be able to express amounts of digital information in a unified way in the near future, explained the CGPM.
With information from BBC World
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