3 ms·
It has always bugged me that scientists consider this obviously terrible kludge of a standardization method acceptable. A civilizaton looking back 20,000 years
by mistercow 13y ago
It has always bugged me that scientists consider this obviously terrible kludge of a standardization method acceptable.
A civilizaton looking back 20,000 years from now and translating our scientific literature would be able to figure out what we meant by "second" by measuring the decay of a cesium 133 atom. But a kilogram (or any unit derived therefrom)? Sorry, the prototype is at the bottom of a crater. You can't miss it - it's the size of a whole golf ball, after all.
- scott_s 13y agoThey consider it "acceptable" because no one has implemented a better solution. They are not happy with it, but it's the least-bad solution.
- ISL 13y agoYour concern is at the heart of the effort to redefine the kilo. Everyone wants to link it to fundamental constants. The trouble is that the IPK is still more reliable than our measurements of Planck's constant and Avogadro's number. The meter was an artifact until measurements of the speed of light surpassed the prototype. The situation here is the same. If the world ended and all of the distributed artifacts were lost, you could use existing measurements of fundamental constants to redefine the kilo at slightly worse precision.