Earth weighs in at six ronnagrams as new prefixes picked for big and small

Experts have voted for an expansion of the universe – or at least the official terminology that can be drawn upon to describe the vanishingly small and the preposterously large.

In a vote at the General Conference on Weights and Measures in Versailles on Friday, the International System of Units (SI) embraced four new prefixes with immediate effect, marking the first such changes in more than 30 years.