Introducing the Quettabyte (Credit: Unsplash)

The world is now producing so much data that our numbers can’t handle it.

To prevent things from getting out of hand, the metric system had to be updated.

We now have a quetta as our largest number. Or rather: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

So the largest current amount of data would be a quettabyte. This is followed by a ronna (27 zeros after the first digit) which is also added.

The prefixes were agreed upon last week at the 27th General Conference on Weights and Measures.

They were introduced along with two others: Ronto (27 zeros after the decimal point) and Quecto (30 zeros) at the lower end of the measurement scale.

Together, the four new prefixes were officially added to the international system of units.

“Most people are familiar with prefixes like milligrams and in milligrams,” explains Richard Brown, chief of metrology at the National Physical Laboratory, who suggested the four new prefixes.

‘But this [new additions] are prefixes for the highest and lowest levels ever recorded.’

“Over the past 30 years, the datasphere has grown exponentially and data scientists have realized that they will run out of words to describe the layers of storage. Those conditions are coming, the future,” he explained.

Humanity is producing more data than ever before – so much that we need new numbers to keep measuring it (Credit: Unsplash)

Brown introduced the new prefixes to officials from 64 countries attending the General Conference on Weights and Measures at Versailles near Paris — which they approved last Friday.

Held every four years in France, the conference is the highest authority of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. The new terms are effective immediately and it is the first time since 1991 that new changes have been made.

Brown said the new terms also made it easier to describe things scientists already know — a list of the smallest and largest things discovered by mankind.

Did you know that the mass of an electron corresponds to a rontogram? And that one byte of data on a mobile phone adds one quectogram to the mass of the phone?

man looking at the stars

Apparently the diameter of the observable universe is only 1 Ronnameter (Credit: Unsplash)

The more distant planet Jupiter has a mass of only two quettagrams. While unbelievable, “the diameter of the entire observable universe is only a ronnameter,” Brown said.

He explained that the new names were not chosen at random: the first letter of the new prefixes had to be a letter not used in other prefixes and units.

“Only the letters ‘r’ and ‘q’ had not yet been assigned. After that, there is a precedent that they resemble Greek letters and that prefixes with large numbers end in an “a” and smaller numbers in an “o”, he added up to it.

‘It’s about time. (We) need new words as things expand,” Brown said.

“In just a few decades, the world has become a very different place.”