Convert Nautical League (UK) (nl (UK)) to Petameter (Pm) instantly.
About these units
Nautical League (UK) (nl (UK))
This older British unit corresponds to 3 UK nautical miles, or 18,240 feet (about 5,563.6 meters), slightly longer than the international version. Before international standardization, distances in British naval operations were often recorded using UK nautical leagues, especially in long-range maritime planning. Like other historical British units, the UK nautical league reflects the era when each naval power maintained its own measurement standards. While no longer used for navigation, it appears in historic ship logs, naval battles, and exploration records—especially for events predating the 20th century. For historians, the distinction between the UK league and the international one is critical to accurate interpretation of maritime distances.
Petameter (Pm)
A petameter is 10¹⁵ meters and begins bridging the gap between solar system scales and the nearest stars. Distances between stars, the size of large cosmic structures, or the wavelengths of extremely low-frequency electromagnetic waves may be expressed in petameters. For example, a light-year is about 9.46 petameters. Petameters rarely appear in everyday astronomical writing because traditional units like light years and parsecs are more intuitive to astronomers and the public. However, the unit's alignment with SI conventions makes it essential in scientific computation and large-scale modeling, especially when dealing with cosmic distances while maintaining strictly metric consistency.