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Student Wants Science To Name 'Hella' Big Number
thodelu writes "Austin Sendek, a 20-year-old UC Davis student, is trying to get scientists from Boise to Beijing to use the term 'hella' to denote the unimaginably huge, seldom-cited quantity of 10 to the 27th power. From the article: 'It started as a joke, but Sendek's Facebook petition: to the Consultative Committee on Units, a subdivision of the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, has drawn more than 60,000 supporters. Its chances for formal adoption by the global weights-and-measures community are hella dim, but Google was so taken with Sendek's modest proposal that it incorporated "hella" in its online calculator.'"
Was "phukka" already taken?
At the bottom of the
like a page in facebook.
"You guys are hella stupid...you guys are hella lame."
Living With a Nerd
Keep it in urban dictionary, where it belongs.
10^27 is WICKED HUGE!
As in "helluva number".
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
This sort of thing is genuinely cool. I've always been a fan. In fact, I even found most if not all of the Bush-isms to be tolerable use of word parts. I tend to communicate and learn by way of concepts, so perhaps this has something to do with it...
Cool story, bro.
Seriously, keep the stupid out of math.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
I think it would be wise not to make reference to a religious concept in an SI prefix.
I'll sign the petition. Why the hella not
.. I lost my bid to the EU to adopt Metric F*ck Ton. =(
What makes him qualified to name anything? Does he even own any land?
In fact, I think it's the Cat's Pajamas!!
I always wanted to deal with hella lots of atoms anyway.
Rethinking email
Is there a legitimate reason to do this? At first it sounded funny to me but wont it become unfunny if it goes into standard practice? Plus, it breaks the convention of naming things after the person who discovered them. I mean he didn't really 'discover' it, I guess it's more like he's trying to brand it. I also suppose that calling a large number a hella is better than calling it a sendek. It's a slow news day.
The Greeks say about this?
Isn't their name for their own country "Hellas"
And 10^27 isn't that impressive. Its much smaller than a Googol
I think Bigga would be more fun.
A Biggabyte harddrive.
Biggabit network connection.
It just roles off the tongue the Hella is just based off some stupid show that will not be remembered in 30 years.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
10 to the 27th power isn't unimaginable huge. I can easily imagine that.
Know what I cannot imagine, however? 10 to the 28th power... Now that simply boggles the mind.
*eyeroll*
"Hella" refers to "hell", a religious term. If science is going to use religion, then it should at least use it accurately.
"Hella" is a perfectly valid prefix, but should be reserved for 10^666.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
There's already a system.
See http://www.bipm.org/en/CGPM/db/19/4/ "The names zepto and zetta are derived from septo suggesting the number seven (the seventh power of 10^3) and the letter "z" is substituted for the letter "s" to avoid the duplicate use of the letter "s" as a symbol. The names yocto and yotta are derived from octo, suggesting the number eight (the eight power of 10^3); the letter "y" is added to avoid the use of the letter "o" as a symbol because it may be confused with the number zero."
Also, the order is Z, Y, so the next is X. Hence the next prefix is likely to be xona
http://www.mindspring.com/~jimvb/unitsystem.htm
The fine petition includes the following description:
Website:
http://www.wix.com/mhostore/makehellaoff...
http://www.makehellaofficial.blogspot.com/
Mission:
To Whom It May Concern:
For all intents and purposes, the SI prefix system has served the scientific community extremely well since its inception. However, we believe there is one significant flaw in the system which demands immediate attention.
As you know, the largest number with a designated SI prefix is 10^24, which carries the name "yotta-". However, in our world of increasing physical awareness and experimental precision, this number is no longer a satisfactory "upper bound" in scientific nomenclature. The analysis of many physical phenomena reveals natural quantities in excess of 27 orders of magnitude, a number which is currently ignored by the SI system.
Designating a prefix for 10^27 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.
Addressing this issue presents an exciting opportunity. Since the SI system has traditionally adopted the last names of accomplished scientists for unit nomenclature, it follows that prefix designation should do the same. From this tradition comes the chance for the SI system to use nomenclature to honor a constantly overlooked scientific contributor: Northern California.
Northern California is home to many influential research institutions, including the University of California, Davis, the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Countless contributions to science have been made by these and other local schools; in fact, elements 93-103 were all discovered at UC Berkeley in a span of 21 years.
However, science isn't all that sets Northern California apart from the rest of the world. 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 (e.g. "there are hella stars out tonight").
Thus, we believe that the SI system can not only rectify their failing prefix system but also honor the scientific progress of Northern California by formally establishing "hella-" as the prefix for 10^27.
Under this designation, the complexity of high-magnitude nomenclature would be greatly reduced. For example, the number of atoms in 120 kg of carbon-12 would be simplified from 6,000 yottaatoms to 6 hellaatoms. Similarly, the sun (mass of 2.2 hellatons) would release energy at 0.3 hellawatts, rather than 300 yottawatts.
We believe the designation of the "hella-" prefix would have a positive impact on all parties involved, and thus warrants serious consideration. We thank you for your time.
Austin Sendek
Movement Founder
UC Davis Physics
List of current prefixes:
The International System of Units (abbr. SI, Systeme Internacional) has established standard prefixes for powers of ten from 10^-24 to 10^24. For example, one could say that the mass of 1.0 moles of carbon-12 is precisely 12 grams, 0.012 kilograms, 12000000 micrograms, or 0.000000000000000000000012 yottagrams. A list of these prefixes appears below.
Factor Name
10^24 yotta
10
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
A guy walks into a store. "I'd like a 1 Hellahertz computer"
Clerk promptly smacks him with a laptop.
"Thanks!"
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
I thought that word had finally died! If you west coast guy's and gal's get to have a Hella big number, then I hereby demand that we east coasters are furnished with a Wicked Big Numbah!
Still not as big as fucking big numbers.
Reading things like this seriously makes me want to slap most any teenager within twenty steps.
This must be what it was like for classical speakers when the apostrophe came widely into use.
...I don't use the term "hella", but a ton of my northern CA friends do. (They claim the term was born in the bay area.) I hope I'm not forced to use the term by naming this number "hella".
Slowest news day ever!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
So as well as using terms from some of the greatest civilizations of the past we should now honour a short-lived Southern California slang term that will have no relevance to anybody else? At least "helluva" would have made a little more sense to people that aren't living in one little area of the world.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
I bet he smoked a hella lot of weed.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I just typed "5 x 10 hellaparsecs" to see if google's calculator would work. It did.
Unfortunately, google currently won't calculate in hellasmoots. Though regular smoots compute just fine.
Still not as big as fucking big numbers.
"fucking" is a verb. To use it as an adjective or adverb it's "fuck'in'; as in "fuck'in huge", fuck'in gigantic", fuck'in expensive", "fuck'in fast", etc...
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
This has been circulating since at least February.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
To avoid exciting the youngsters & offending some oldsters, why not 'hecka'?
The corresponding prefix for 10^-27 would logically be hello. Just imagine trying to take a lecture serously when the lecturer talks about "hello Henrys"
Because in 50 years, using the fad-word "hella" will make you sound like a grandpa. Other fad-words destined for the same fate are "tweet" and "fail".
Grandpa: "Now there's a hella fail I'd like to tweet about."
Kid: "Does anyone have the slightest clue what this old fart is trying to say?"
10^27 is seldomly cited?
im a spectroscopist and we use quantities like 10^27 quite often. id imagine astronomers, chemists, and astrophysicists use the number even more
60,000 / 6,700,000,000 = 8.96x10^-6, which one can approximate with 0.
to make English majors cry.
People who use Hella denote a certain level of ignorance and give fad terms more importance that actually doing thins.
Stop it. Make a name for yourself doing something.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Wikipedia has this chart of increasing hard disk capacities over time. If the current rate is maintained (factor of 10 increase every 5 years), we may see hellabyte drives in around 70 years!
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
That's what this idea is.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Different root. Also, Greece should ideally be pronounced with a silent "H" and accented at the last syllable, nothing like Cartman's favorite word.
Also, 10^27 is not such a big number and already has a name in (I guess) most languages. If you are interested, in Greek it is called "oktakis ekatommirio".
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Go and read some Swift, then tell me if that's an appropriate use of the phrase.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Harvard student petitions SI to use "Wicked" as prefix for 10^30....
My friend Hela is slightly overweight and she admits it, but all this is just cruel. Please stop equating 'Hela' with 'extreme largeness'. Thank you.
Every single person I know that uses the word/phrase/prefix 'hella' is a raving douchebag.
Lets not legitimise their idiocy, hmm?
When I'm looking for something to buy locally, like a car or whatever, if I see the word 'hella' in the description, I tend to move on and ignore the item, and the poster. Most always (ok, only 95% of the time) posters who use 'hella' to describe their item are either outright liars, fakes, or too dumb to know what is wrong with their stuff. Especially when it comes to buying import cars, 'hella' is your clue they riced it out and forgot to put oil in it the last time they changed the filter, or overheated it cause they were too dumb to replace a hose and drove it another 12 miles home with the temp gauge pinned to 'H' and smoke billowing out the hood. This also afflicts those who are selling their beat-to-crap-dropped-on-the-pavement notebook, or table saw, or cell phone. Or other phrases that translate into "might need (fill in with the expensive repair option)".
If I never see that word again, I will be happy. I know it started out cute and all, but now around here it's just shorthand for 'l0ser'.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
10^27 might be seldom cited, but it is not unimaginably huge. Hell, it's less than the number of atoms in an small elephant.
If you want huge, look at Graham's number. Or the TREE sequence (see here for a quick introduction), which increases extremely fast. I love it because the definition is not too hard to understand, you can even easily compute the first two terms by hand (it's 1 and 3) then BAM, TREE(3) make Graham's number look puny.
I tried many things, but couldn't get Google calculator to recognize "hella" or spit it out. I give up, how do you do it?
Hella is cool - I used to have a set on my rally car. They're bright, but not 10^27 bright...
Am I the only one who saw the picture of this guy and thought "there's no way he's only 20"? He's got the gray hair mad scientist look going on.
Exactly what it says on the tin.
http://bit.ly/cRJzqM
I'm not quite sure where 'xona' comes from. Using Greek prefixes for the big numbers, 10^27 should be some variation on ennea-? So it would be enameters or eyameters or similar. The small numbers are often different and more flexible, so 10^-27 would probably be nona- (based on the Latin). It could also be something like 'suvto-' from the Danish syvtyve.
If 10^27 is hella then clearly the next steps are:
- assloda = 10^30
- shitloada = 10^33
- shittona = 10^36
- f*ckloada = 10^39 and so on
why Facebook needs to die...
Gene Roddenberry didn't sue Motorola to prevent them from releasing the StarTAC phone (which was modeled on the Star Trek communicator).
[Insert pithy quote here]
What about "hecka," its sanitized cousin? Using it for 10^-27 might be too confusing.
hella cool!
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
"hecka" sounds better to me.
..."Big Fucking"
10^27 already has a name, it's called Octillion. Dag nabit! I like my numbering system the way it is! No get off my lawn!
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Google was so taken with Sendek's modest proposal that it incorporated "hella" in its online calculator.
they thought it was funny and made a little joke of it in the same way they temporarily added the annoying horn thing on youtube because lots of people "rick roll"ing people with it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potrzebie#Unit_System
http://webofstories.com/play/17067
Don Knuth wrote this system up, won an award for it, and got it published in MAD Magazine - all by the age of nineteen. Check and mate, Sendek!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I prefer the proposal made some years ago to add the SI prefixes:
Chici: 10^39
Zeppi: 10^36
Gummi: 10^33
Grouchi: 10^30
Harpi: 10^27
Harpo: 10^-27
Groucho: 10^-30
Gummo: 10^-33
Zeppo: 10^-36
Chico: 10^-39
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
In Norcal they use 'hella' for everything. While we're at it why not a petition to formally change San Francisco's name to The City.
That's 10^27 stupid. . .
"I disagree with you" does not equal "flamebait."
"Hella" seems derived from hell and that would give the spelling of this huge number a negative connotation. Numbers are numbers, they should not have any connotation. That Groucho Harpo proposal has the same problem, it has a happy connotation. Not everyone would like to hear something like: there are Hella stars in the galaxy, or, I'm sorry to report but you earned Harpo dollars this month.
Dear Slashdot,
This is goodbye for us. You used to be a friend, with clever and interesting things to say. No longer. Your tired rants about the iPhone, your increasing inclusion of Idle articles in the RSS feed... it's clear that you have drifted off into a mad, lonely world. I have no interest in reading about some young pup on facebook, or about how people lose a bit of reception in some phones in some circumstances, etc. I hope someday you realize the mistakes you have made.
Take care,
mome rath
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
They'll do that as soon as you are using the previous, accepted terms, like:
Meter, Liter, ....
Nothing new here- what use is there really for a number about 1/4 of a Googol?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googol
love is just extroverted narcissism
According to my ASTP prof (many years ago), the number of hydrogen atoms in the universe is a "bejillion".
This is estimated between 10^77 and 10^82--significantly more than a "hella".
Note that in astrophysics, a precision of 3 orders of magnitude is considered exact--so, this is a good guess.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
As a New Yorker, I would say it's all kind of stupid, but maybe we should quantify "Fu***' huuuge!"
Hella is slang for 'a hell of a'.
Even though I am not religious, I don't think it is very nice to blaspheme just so you can coin a new word.
What next? a farkinbyte or shitemeter, or bugerlitre?
I suggest an 'Adams' because "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
I'm also partial to 'shitload'
I don't see why this is a big deal. First of all, this is probably the first and last time the issue will even come up (except for maybe the year 2078, when 60-hella hard drives are released), and second, there's a precedent; wasn't the googleplex named by a two-year old or something?
I don't know that it's a bad idea. Perhaps friendly units would be more friendly to use.
for much larger numbers, 10^100 = a googol, 10^googol = a googolplex. Now which of these is unimaginably huge?
Precision in language is necessary for precision in thought - this type of mockery and thought process about science is uneducating and stupifying our (human) advancement of a society.
isn't this hella-big number also known as Avogadro's number?