More and more data is being produced, which is why new prefixes are needed to indicate the quantity

New prefixes to use for any unit of measurement.The enormous amount of data produced every day makes it necessary to choose new official terms.

Every day we produce approx 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. A huge figure that we can indicate with a one followed by 30 zeros (10×10^30), and it is constantly growing.According to some estimates, within the next decade, daily global data production will be enough to fill enough DVDs to pave the distance between Earth and Mars.That is, on average, around 225 million kilometres.

That's the problem with such large numbers.We cannot understand them and are forced to make absurd comparisons like the one just made.The fact is that otherwise it is difficult to understand each other, also because words are missing.Literally.For many years, in fact, there were no technical terms with which to simply indicate such a quantity of data.For this reason, the General Conference on Weights and Measures in Paris, the body that manages universal units of measurement, recently met with the aim of finding new prefixes with which to indicate these numbers.

New prefixes for data and units of measurement

The pretext was data but these new prefixes can be used with any unit of measurement, from bytes to grams.Thus, just as we moved from the kilobyte to the megabyte, and then from the gigabyte to the terabyte, the disproportionate increase in our digital production will be described with the terms newly coined by the Conference.The latest additions are Ronna And that, prefixes with which the ronnabyte (ten to the 27th byte) and the quettabyte (10 to the 30th byte).There are also their counterparts for tiny quantities, obviously:they are the prefixes Ronto And that's it, which can be used to indicate tiny masses (from ten to the minus 27 grams to ten to the minus 30). According to the journal Nature, for example, the planet Earth, in total, weighs just one ronnagram, while a single electron has a mass of one quectogram.

The choice of these terms was not accidental.The English metrologist led the team Richard Brown, which has supported the need for new prefixes for five years.The last time the Conference updated its prefix system, in 1991, it was driven by the chemistry sector, while prefixes like peta and exa they date back to the 1970s.Brown's urgency was also due to the fact that, in the absence of official prefixes, some companies were doing things on their own, proposing terms as they liked.The converter Google, for example, it translated a thousand yottabytes in a hellabyte, very colloquial term, almost slang, which has spread together with "brontobyte" to indicate enormous quantities.“From a metrological point of view, this filled me with horror because they are completely unofficial terms” explained Brown, capable of generating confusion in a global context.That's why he looked for better alternatives by using words that begin with letters that are rarely used by prefixes, such as r or q.Another factor is the assonance with numbers in Latin or ancient Greek: Ronna And that in fact they remember ennea And deka, the Greek nine and ten.Following this criterion, Brown had also proposed the prefix quecca, soon withdrawn because it was too similar to a Portuguese swear word.