Kilogram Getting Lighter

[Dubh Aingeal]

The 118-year-old cylinder that is the international prototype for the metric mass, kept tightly under lock and key outside Paris, is mysteriously losing weight — if ever so slightly. Physicist Richard Davis of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sevres, southwest of Paris, says the reference kilo appears to have lost 50 micrograms compared with the average of dozens of copies.

[Onyx]

Wow.

Very strange.

[Scary Guy]

There are going to be a couple pissed off drug dealers out there.

[angusfergus]

More likely IMHO is that the prototypes used for comparison have gotten heavier. As was stated in the article, 50 micrograms is roughly the weight of a fingerprint....which is more likely, that only one of twelve cylinders made at the same time the same way would have lost weight, or that the other eleven had been mildly handled by bare human hands?

[ttogreh]

However, the human fingerprint is also acidic, isn't it? This is rather interesting. Still, in this day of computerized weight sensing devices and precision manufacturing, couldn't twelve new cylinders be made, tomorrow, without any worry of any differences between them, outside of perhaps the nanogram range?

[Destroit]

I blame E.T. entirely