Blogtrek

An extended system of units

Scientists have for a long time dealt with large numbers, in the millions, billions and so forth. It was unwieldy to say 3.6 billion electron volts or a trillionth of a meter, so scientists long ago invented the International System of Units. By this system, one could express higher numbers. For example, a hertz is a cycle per second, used to measure electromagnetic frequencies. So then a thousand hertz is a kilohertz, or KHz for short. A million is a megahertz, and a billion is a gigahertz, where "giga-" means gigantic. A trillion is "tera-" from terato- meaning monster. Similarly, a nanosecond is a billionth of a second, and a picometer is a trillionth of a meter. This proved to be inadequate, so two more units, femto- (a quadrillionth) and atto- (a quintillionth-) were added (I am using the American interpretation of "billion" and so forth). Shortly after that came their reciprocals, peta- meaning a quadrillion, and exa-, meaning a quintillion. Even this became inadequate, as some scientists started to use the units milliattovolts. This is not legitimate as one is not supposed to use more than one of these suffixes at a time. So more units were added: zetta- for a sextillion, and yotta- for a septillion, or 10^24. Similarly came zepto- meaning sextillionth, and yocto- meaning septillionth.

Even this is inadequate. For example the Sun puts out 380 yottawatts, so that Sirius, being 23 times brighter than the Sun, puts out 8,740 yottawatts. This is not legitimate, as it uses numbers above a thousand. When such a number is encountered you need to divide by a thousand and use the next higher unit. But there isn't any in this case. That is why I devised a system of units to go well beyond these, in fact, all the way to a vigintillion, 10^63. After yotta- comes xona-, so that Sirius puts out 8.74 xonawatts. Then weka-, vunda-, and so forth. I followed the pattern of backward sequence of letters of the alphabet followed by a rendition of the Latin for the number. Similarly I came up with xonto-, meaning an octillionth, and so forth.

I posted them on my unit system site and said that these were my suggestions for units. It was not official, of course, and I hear no attempt to make them official. A committee of scientists, not just one eager blogger, needs to extend the system. If they took my units as a model, undoubtedly there would be some changes. For example, my vunda-, meaning 10^33 and connoting eleven, means 38 in Bantu or Swahili, so this could be confusing. Robert Munafo quotes my system, but says that he thinks the unit beyond yotta- is more likely to be novetta- instead of xona- as novett or something like that is Italian for nine. So remember if you use these extended prefixes that they are not official.

Nevertheless, I am glad to see that these names are starting to take hold. I did a Google™ search for "xona weka" and got 78 references! The main one seems to be Plexos, and apparently people are picking it up from either my site or Plexos'. Maybe they will form part of an official system soon so we can measure the Earth in grams (6 xonagrams). So go ahead and use them, but be sure to acknowledge that I developed these names first.