Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Hella way to describe massive numbers!

From New Scientist:
We need a way to describe super-high numbers. So says an online petition with over 20,000 supporters, advocating the prefix "hella" for 1027.

Yotta (1024) is the largest prefix in the International System of Units (SI), followed by zeta (1021), exa (1018) and peta (1015), according to Physics World

Hella units could prove handy for numbers such as the sun's wattage, according to physics student Austin Sendek of the University of California, Davis, who set up the webpage on Facebook. He writes:

"Designating a prefix for 1027 is of critical importance for scientists in all fields. This number is significant in many crucial calculations, including the wattage of the sun, distances between galaxies, or the number of atoms in a large sample."

Sendek argues that the prefix "hella" would be an appropriate way to honour the science of North California, where he is based.

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