Hella Good: Mixing Science and California Slang to Name a Really Big Number

If you came across the number 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, which is a one followed by 27 zeroes, won't you say that's a hella lot of numbers? UC Davis student Austin Sendek seems to think so. He has initiated a Facebook campaign to designate a scientifically accepted prefix for this number, 10^27. The prefix he chose is "hella" because it is "a hell of a lot" of numbers. It is also his way of mixing homegrown California slang with science. Sendek thinks the new prefix would be the best way to acknowledge the Golden State's hella hot contributions to science. If Sendek's proposal is accepted, then hella would come right after "yotta.” Physics World reports: Yotta (10^24), which was established in 2001, is currently the largest number established in the International System of Units (SI) — the world’s most widely used system of measurement — with zeta (10^21), exa (10^18) and peta (10^15) ...