Los
Angeles Times: A student at the University of California,
Davis, has proposed the term "hella" to denote the (as yet
unnamed) metric prefix for a million billion trillion, or 10
27. Austin Sendek, a 20-year-old physics major, has
petitioned the International Bureau of Weights and Measures
(one of three organizations that oversee the keeping of metric
standards) to consider the term at its upcoming meeting in
September. What started as a joke on Sendek's Facebook page has
been gaining supporters, including Google, which incorporated
"hella" in its online calculator. The term, which originated in
northern California, means "really" or "a lot."
