PARIS — A kilogram just isn't what it used to be.
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.
• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Natural Science Center.
"The mystery is that they were all made of the same material, and many were made at the same time and kept under the same conditions, and yet the masses among them are slowly drifting apart," he said. "We don't really have a good hypothesis for it."
The kilogram's uncertainty could affect even countries that don't use the metric system — it is the ultimate weight standard for the U.S. customary system, where it equals 2.2 pounds.
Campaign staffers of American Presidential hopefully Hillary Clinton were reported to be the first to notice that both the cylinder and the bell jar protecting it were somewhat unusual ones and seemed to be the exact copy of souvenirs that Mrs. Clinton brought back with her from vacationing in Paris, but were unavailable for comment. An unnamed source related to various reporters that they not only were no longer in the Clinton employ, but had been missing for the past several days.
No comments:
Post a Comment