I don’t think it’s that uncommon. For one thing, it is listed in the NIST Guide to the SI (https://www.nist.gov/pml/special-publication-811/nist-guide-...)

It also, IMO, beats acre-foot as a generic way to describe volumes (who even knows an acre is a chain by a furlong?)

It’s similarly difficult to have an intuitive grasp regardless. And I’m an SI-loving engineer.

e19 and e16 are both absurdly large, which is probably why they used miles. Maybe kilometers would be better for folks who need it in SI.

Edit: And I see someone quoted the value from the article apparently few of us read completely.

> The new figure stands at approximately 43.9 million cubic kilometers

quoted from the article