# What comes after a trillion (If there is such a number)????

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-a-trillion-if-there-is-such-a-number/7005>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 8, 2000, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-a-trillion-if-there-is-such-a-number/7005 "2000-02-08T20:19:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![falcon2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dbc845/32.png) [@falcon2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/falcon2)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2000, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-a-trillion-if-there-is-such-a-number/7005/21 "2000-02-11T04:28:00Z")

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Aww come-mon, who cares, just smoke a couple big fat joints like dear old Carl and say “BILLLlllions upon BILLLlllions.” Don’t forget to gesture _about the size of a bread-box_ with you hands.

God I miss him. _sniff_

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**Author:** ![NanoByte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecc23a/32.png) [@NanoByte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NanoByte)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2000, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-a-trillion-if-there-is-such-a-number/7005/22 "2000-02-11T05:22:00Z")

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Hey, now all of that’s less than **half** (5 tenths) the whole job. What goes up to infinity must also go down to zero, right? Like we have:

tenths  
hundreds  
thousands  
…shoot the piano typist.

You’ll note that this system is not symmetircal about 1, i.e., there are no unitths/uniths. Somewhere along the line, those Hindu-Arabic mathicators screwed up! Surely the software artists can repair this problem. They can fix **ANYTHING** , right?

We’ve got to watch out how we play these things around here, though. We may end up enticing our dear Satan to post the latest calculation of \<font face=“symbol”\>p\</font\> to all its glowing decimal places, each in a different color.

Ray (got **someone’s** number)

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**Author:** ![Snark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Snark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snark)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2000, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-a-trillion-if-there-is-such-a-number/7005/23 "2000-02-11T06:13:00Z")

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How about bytes? There’s:

byte  
kilobyte  
megabyte  
gigabyte  
terrabyte (?)

What comes after that?

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**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\
**Post date:** [February 11, 2000, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-comes-after-a-trillion-if-there-is-such-a-number/7005/24 "2000-02-11T06:32:00Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> Originally posted by Snark:  
> \*\*How about bytes? There’s:
> 
> byte  
> kilobyte  
> megabyte  
> gigabyte  
> terrabyte (?)
> 
> What comes after that?\*\*

peta, then exa, assuming, of course that when the computer industry ends up needing prefixes beyond tera, they stick with the current standard of using standard metric prefixes.

* * *

_Eschew Obfuscation_

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