One octillion is a hella big number

More than 35,000 users of Facebook, including scientists and students, have joined a campaign calling for "hella-" to be accepted within the International System of Units (SI) as the official prefix corresponding to the number 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (one octillion).

Founder of the campaign, Austin Sendek, a physics student at the University of California, said recent breakthroughs in science meant that longer numbers are needed. "As you know, the largest number with a designated SI prefix is 10²⁴, which carries the name 'yotta-'," Sendek wrote on Facebook. He added that naming numbers in the 10²⁷ category is of "critical importance for scientists in all fields" because these numbers are vital to representing "the wattage of the sun, distances between galaxies, or the number of atoms in a large sample".

Sendek suggested the prefix "hella-" as a tribute to northern California, which is home to several famous scientific institutions. "The area is also notorious for the creation and widespread usage of the English slang 'hella', which typically means 'very' or can refer to a large quantity," Sendek wrote.

The official SI prefixes for big numbers are:

10 = deka-
100 = hecto-
1,000 = kilo-
1,000,000 = mega-
1,000,000,000 = giga-
1,000,000,000,000 = tera-
1,000,000,000,000,000 = peta-
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 = exa-
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = zetta-
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = yotta-
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = hella-?