Extended System of Units

The International system of units is a system of units to help us write down quantities without having to use scientific notation or lots of digits or zeroes. For example, a million Hertz is a megahertz; a billionth of a meter is a nanometer, and a billion meters is a gigameter, which I have almost never heard of; it is 1/4 of the way to the Moon. The international system first invented a system of prefixes that went to 1012 and to 10-18. This proved to be inadequate; for example, we are now talking about thousands of terabytes. So this was extended to 1018, the small units still went only to 10-18. Even this has proven to be inadequate. So the scientific system went two steps farther in each direction. 1021 is zetta-, and 1024 is yotta-, and for the first time this week, I saw yotta- actually being used. The sun puts out 380 yottawatts of power, says Nearest Star, by Leon Golub and Jay M. Pasachoff, page 12. I can see how these endings were derived. zetta is z + -etta, which is an alteration of septi-, meaning 7, as 21 is 7 groups of three. yotta is y + -otta, an alteration of octo-, meaning 8. The pattern here is that we go backwards from the beginning of the alphabet, starting with z and y, and we follow it up with an alteration of the Greek or Latin for the next number. According to this pattern, the next ending should be xona-, since x comes before y in the alphabet, and 9 is noni- in Latin. Similarly, 1030 should be weka-, since w precedes x and 10 is deka in Greek. Here is my proposal for extending the system all the way to 1063, a vigintillion, the highest continuous -illion number recognized in dictionaries. Why way out this far? We talk of bigger and smaller things all the time. For example, a jiffy is 100 rimtoseconds, 10-43 second, which some say is the smallest unit of time possible. So here is what I say:
Factor Name  Symbol
101 deka da
102 hecto h
103 kilo k
106 mega M
109 giga G
1012 tera T
1015 peta P
1018 exa E
1021 zetta Z
1024 yotta Y
1027 xona X
1030 weka W
1033 vunda V
1036 uda U
1039 treda TD
1042 sorta S
1045 rinta R
1048 quexa Q
1051 pepta PP
1054 ocha O
1057 nena N
1060 minga MI
1063 luma L
Factor Name  Symbol
10-1 deci d
10-2 centi c
10-3 milli m
10-6 micro µ
10-9 nano n
10-12 pico p
10-15 femto f
10-18 atto a
10-21 zepto z
10-24 yocto y
10-27 xonto x
10-30 wekto w
10-33 vunkto v
10-36 unto u
10-39 trekto td
10-42 sotro s
10-45 rimto r
10-48 quekto q
10-51 pekro pk
10-54 otro o
10-57 nekto nk
10-60 mikto mi
10-63 lunto l