Elimination of Leap Seconds and Establishment of Four New Units: Ultra-Large and Ultra-Fine Scales

International Bureau of Weights and Measures Decision on the 18th
Leap seconds to be abolished after 2035
Names assigned such as Quetta for 10^30 and Ronna for 10^27

▲At 8:59:59 in August 2017, one second was added in South Korea. The SDO observing the sun moves at a speed of 3 km per second. Without calculations accurate to one-thousandth of a second, it would collide with other celestial bodies.
[Photo by NASA]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-su] Countries around the world have created four new prefixes to express units in response to the explosion of digital data and the development of ultra-precise scientific technology. They also decided to abolish the leap second, which is added or subtracted by one second annually, starting from 2035.

The International Committee for Weights and Measures (CGPM) held a meeting in Paris, France on the 18th and made this decision. Regarding the International System of Units (SI) prefixes, 10 to the power of 30 will be called quetta (abbreviation Q), and 10 to the power of 27 will be called ronna (abbreviation R). The ultra-small units, 10 to the power of -27 will be named ronto (abbreviation r), and 10 to the power of -30 will be named quecto (abbreviation q). The CGPM is an event where government representatives from around the world gather every four years to decide on measurement and unit issues.

This is the first time new prefixes have been introduced since 1991. At that time, the CGPM named 10 to the power of 21 as zetta, 10 to the power of -21 as zepto, 10 to the power of 24 as yotta, and 10 to the power of -24 as yocto. In 1975, peta (10 to the power of 15) and exa (10 to the power of 18) were newly created. This is because, with the advancement of science and technology, there has been an increasing need to handle more units and extremely small numbers.

Richard Brown, a metrology researcher at the National Physical Laboratory in the UK, said, "Data science is leading the creation of new metrology units," adding, "As the amount of data produced annually worldwide has already reached the zetta (10 to the power of 21) unit, there have been informal proposals to call 10 to the power of 27 as hella or bronto." For example, Google's unit converter already recognizes 1000 yotta (10 to the power of 24) bytes as 1 hellabyte, and the UK government website sometimes refers to brontobytes.

Additionally, at this meeting, participating countries agreed to abolish the leap second starting from 2035. The leap second is the addition or subtraction of one second each year to eliminate the discrepancy between Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is based on atomic clocks, and Universal Time (UT1), which is based on Earth's rotation. UTC, based on the vibration frequency of cesium atoms, has almost no error (one second in 3000 years). However, UT1 is based on the irregular rotation of the Earth, so over time, differences arise between UTC and UT1. While this may not be a significant issue for the general public, fields such as satellite navigation systems (GPS_), software, and communications have argued for its abolition because applying the leap second each year requires complex operations.

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