zetta is a unit prefix in the metric system denoting a factor of 1021 or . the prefix was added to the international system of units (si) in 1991 and has the symbol z. zetta is evocative of the latin numeral septem, meaning seven. therefore it was used to denote the seventh power of 1000. a prefix of the same value, hepta, was informally introduced a few years before the promulgation of zetta. it was formed from the greek á¼ÏÏÎ¬, (hepta), also meaning seven. hepta never received official sanction and is obsolete. zeta (ÎÎ®ÏÎ±), although being the 6th letter of the greek alphabet, denotes a value of seven (7) when used as a numeral. examples: * the mass of earth's atmosphere is approximately 5 zettagrams (zg).http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/earthfact.html * the volume of seawater in the earth's oceans is approximately 1.369 zettalitres (zl).http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/syedqadri.shtml * avogadro's constant is 602.2 zetta molâ1.http://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/value?na * a zettabyte is a quantity of information or information storage capacity equal to 1021 bytes or 1,000 exabytes.compare zebibyte which is a multiple of 1024 as typical unit for information storage.  ==footnotes== ==external links==  * bipm website
Metric_prefixes