Kilogram Reference Losing Weight

doubleacr writes "Ran across a story on CNN that says 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.""

Comments

The Kilogram is not losing weight

[allanc]

The Kilogram is defined in reference to the chunk of metal in Paris. It's the *definition* of the Kilogram.

Therefore, the Kilogram is not getting lighter.

We're all getting heavier.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[Meshach]

I thought that originally the kilogram was defined in terms of water, the mass of 10 square cm of water. The meter is defined in terms of the speed of light so that gives an empirical way to define the kg independent of anything else. It would be interesting to see if it has changed relative to that measurement

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[hjf]

I thought that originally the kilogram was defined in terms of water, the mass of 10 square cm of water.

I think you meant 1 cubic decimeter.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[Bender0x7D1]

I thought that originally the kilogram was defined in terms of water, the mass of 10 square cm of water.

We can't use water as a reference since the molecules in the water are constantly splitting into ions and reforming as molecules. So it is essentially impossible to get 1000 cm^3 of "pure" water. It will be some mixture of H2O, H+ and O-- ions. Also, it would be incredibly hard to prevent other molecules from being disolved in the water. A few stray molecules hitting the surface will ruin your reference mass. Not to mention you need a container to keep it in...

The meter is defined in terms of the speed of light so that gives an empirical way to define the kg independent of anything else.

As mentioned above, we could measure a 1000 cm^3 volume, but we couldn't guarantee the purity of the water in that volume.

That's one reason we are trying to make a perfect sphere to replace the reference kilogram. Then we will have a definition of the kilogram in terms of number of silicon atoms.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[Anonymous Coward]

The meter was originally 1/10,000,000 of the distance between the equator and the North Pole along the meridian running through Paris. (No chauvinism there...) Someone made up a brass reference. Later, the meter spent some time as the distance between a couple of scratches on a platinum-iridium bar. Then we tried a fwe wavelengths of cesium, then krypton-86. Eventually, we adopted a definition for a similar length based on c.

You don't think anyone would really pick a number like 1 / 299,792,458 if they got to start from scratch, do you? Why not 1/300,000,000, just to make the calculations easier? Or, since powers of ten are supposed to be so vital to the system, why not 1/ 10,000,000, or 1/100,000,000?

Ultimately the meter is as long as it is because it's about a yard long, and that's a useful length for measuring on a human scale. It's not "scientific" at all.

Similarly, a kilogram is a useful weight about the same size as a pound. It happens to be about the mass 10 cm cubed of water, much as a pint of water weighs a pound (the world around, and takes 1 BTU to raise temperature by 1 degree F). Later they made a reference standard for this fairly arbitrary amount of mass.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[TheRaven64]

The density of water changes when you vary the temperature or pressure, so you'd need an accurate measure of distance, temperature, and pressure in order to get your 1Kg of water.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[Ferzerp]

I think you mean that the density of water is essentially invariant to pressure.

It very much fluctuates with temperature.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[Eternauta3k]

The meter was originally 1/10,000,000 of the distance between the equator and the North Pole along the meridian running through Paris. (No chauvinism there...)

Yeah, cause that meridian is so different to the rest _

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[Entropius]

In physics we talk about the masses of things from single atoms to galaxies.

In that range, 1 ~= 2

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[azenpunk]

we need to have a 'pendantic olympics'. the top prize would be a kick in the teeth. here goes my performance: water itself is not pure H2O, since the term water predates the knowledge of the chemical formula, however even the empirical formula for water comes out to H2O (assuming the only ions present are H3O+ {there's never really any naked protons in solution, top that!} and OH-, no sodium ions or chloride or anything like that). scores: 4.7, 4.6, 4.1, 1.6 (french judge), 4.4, 4.6 totaling: 24.0, er...23.99999999 if we're going by the metric standard.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[jmv]

It will be some mixture of H2O, H+ and O-- ions.

I really doubt you'll see O-- ions in water. H2O actually splits into H+ and OH- and the H+ often ends up (IIRC) forming an H3O+ ion.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[The One and Only]

There's currently a project (which was reported on Slashdot months ago) to make a new reference kilogram of a specific element and geometry. From that, they can define the kilogram as a certain number of atoms of a certain element.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[Guppy06]

"You could specify the density of water at $PRESSURE and at its maximum density (somewhere around 4 C)."

Self-referential. Pressure is (force)/(length^2), or breaking it down further, (mass)/[(time^2)(length)]. This is why BIPM abandoned the "cubic deciliter of water" definition in favor of the current platinum-iridium artifact (less compressible, less affected by temperature, etc).

"The only problem with doing this for high-precision measurements is: what is water? Some fraction of the hydrogen will be deuterium, and that'll throw off the density. What fraction of the hydrogen should be deuterium for "standard water"?"

Not an issue, as the average rates of naturally occurring isotopes in the universe is already known (hence the non-integer masses in periodic tables). You'd have a greater problem establishing the purity of the water sample in question, at least if you insist on using it in its liquid state; they don't call it the "universal solvent" for nothing.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[jollyreaper]

That's one reason we are trying to make a perfect sphere to replace the reference kilogram. Then we will have a definition of the kilogram in terms of number of silicon atoms. Good luck on that. This reference bar is certainly worse than we've sphered.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[loshwomp]

we need to have a 'pendantic olympics'

Oooh, can I compete? I guess for starters I'll point out that the word you're looking for is 'pedantic'.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[Guppy06]

"We can't use water as a reference since the molecules in the water are constantly splitting into ions and reforming as molecules."

OK, exactly how far up your ass did you have to reach to pull that one out?

See, we have this thing called "The First Law of Thermodynamics." At the molecular scale, water molecules don't just decide to break up and go their own way willy-nilly, not the least because both elements involved (hydrogen and oxygen) really don't like being alone (the two hydrogen atoms can go off on their own merry way as a diatomic molecule, but the oxygen will be lonely). Breaking molecular bonds in water takes energy, otherwise cracking water to produce hydrogen would be more cost-effective than cracking methanol (the carbon atoms have a more independent personality and are better able to get over any rejection issues it might have).

Beyond that, even if the energy to crack an individual water molecule were as trivially small as you believe, the energy would have to come from somewhere. Cracking water is endothermic, but so is making it (oxygen atoms, at least, need to be pried apart against their will first, assuming they're not in some kinky threeway), but even if one of those two reactions was exothermic, the energy required to do one act must necessarily equal the energy released by the other, meaning a net change in energy, and a net change in the number of water molecules, of zero.

The real reasons we don't use water are:

1. Corrosiveness (which you already covered)
2. Compressibility (there is no such thing as an incompressible substance, but liquids are more susceptible than solids)
3. Thermal expansion (something else solids are less susceptible to)
4. Last, but not least: evaporation

"So it is essentially impossible to get 1000 cm^3 of "pure" water."

Very easy, actually; the problem is maintaining its purity after it cools down from superheated steam.

"That's one reason we are trying to make a perfect sphere to replace the reference kilogram. "

Actually, there are a number of different proposals. One involves fixing the Avogadro constant as you say, but the other involves basing mass in terms of an electrical current through a device called a watt balance, which would reverse the current relationship between mass and electric current.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[camperdave]

Unless he wants to enter the jewelry dangling event.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[iocat]

This is why we need to continue to use the English system. The metric system seems all orderly, till you realize the core definitions are based on lame french stuff. In my world, a mile is a mile, based on my Nike+iPod telling me I have gone a mile (ideally backed up with Lance Armstrong or that English chick congratulating me). A yard is the distance between King George's nose and the tip of his finger. A foot is 12 inches. And a pound is what my scale tells me I have too many of.

Anyway, I measure most things in Smoots.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[camperdave]

Silly Americans... Your pounds are defined in terms of the kilogram.

The international avoirdupois pound is equal to exactly 453.59237 grams. The definition of the international pound was agreed by the United States and countries of the Commonwealth of Nations in 1958.

Wikipedia

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[gomiam]

Remember this useless thing called pH, used for measuring acidity and basicity? You may remember that the neutral point is 7, the pH of pure water at 25 degrees Celsius, when the amounts of H3O+ and OH- are almost equal (yes, those ions exist even in pure liquid water). See this for more information. Thermodynamics is all right but some of its laws get quirky at sufficiently small distances.

Re:The Kilogram is not losing weight

[FrangoAssado]

Not an issue, as the average rates of naturally occurring isotopes in the universe is already known (hence the non-integer masses in periodic tables).

Just a small nitpick: that's not the only reason for non-integer masses in periodic tables. When neutrons and protons come together in an atom nucleus, their mass change, and a corresponding amount of energy (E=m*c^2) is released or absorbed. For example, while the atomic mass of Carbon-12 is 12, the atomic mass of Hydrogen-1 (only one proton) is a little over 1.

In effect, that's how nuclear bombs work: when the nucleus of an atom of plutonium breaks up, the mass of the resulting pieces is less than the mass of the original nucleus; the difference is released as radiation and heat.

Sublimation?

[Eustace Tilley]

Could it be a few atoms drifting off in the vapor? Well, why wouldn't the copies' atoms be drifting off as well?

Governments have been doing this for years!

[dada21]

If you look over history, governments have taken metals that were supposed to be a certain weight, and mysteriously removed weight from them and still called the weight the same thing.

Look at the standard weight known as the "dollar" (thaler). It used to be the equivalent of 1/20th of an ounce of gold. Then it was 1/35th of an ounce of gold. Last month that same dollar weight standard was 1/650th of an ounce of gold, and today I believe it is 1/711th of an ounce of gold.

The Roman Empire leaders also had mysteriously disappearing weights... Their Denarius lost over 99% of its official weight over just a few hundred years.

It is definitely a mystery...

The metre must be shrinking then...

[flyingfsck]

Ah, so that explains the obesity epidemic, but my ever increasing middle indicates that the metre must also be shrinking at the same time.

Re:The metre must be shrinking then...

[LiquidCoooled]

Actually, that might be possible.
Light speed is not constant in a gravitational field, if some of the other posters are correct and the kilogram has changed because of a localised gravitational shift, then its possible that the definition of a metre could also have changed..

Re:The metre must be shrinking then...

[fractoid]

I'm sorry dude, but unlike the kilogram, the metre isn't defined based on an artifact but rather it is defined based on the speed of light in a vacuum, so unless that changed, the metre hasn't either. Fixed. Otherwise, you'd have to pay 20% more for sheet glass because meters inside the glass would be shorter than meters outside the glass. :P

Re:The metre must be shrinking then...

[canadian_right]

The meter has a long history and was in fact once defined as "one ten-millionth of the length of the Earth's meridian along a quadrant, that is the distance from the equator to the north pole". Then it was a number of standard wave lengths and not until 1983 that the meter was defined as how far light travels in a very short time. Wiki has a good article on the meter.

In a vacuum the speed of light is constant - even in a gravitational field as long as your are freely falling.

Re:The metre must be shrinking then...

[Basehart]

When I was a kid I thought a foot was the length of Julias Ceasars foot and a metre was the length of Napoleon Bonapartes foot. When I found out later that a metre was considerably longer than a foot I deducted that Napoleon must have had really long feet. I later found out that Napoleon was also a very short fellow which made my mental image even more ridiculous. To this day whenever I hear the name I think of this short guy with three foot long feet.

Re:The metre must be shrinking then...

[iamacat]

You misunderstood the background. Napoleon was not a tall fellow, but he was a great lover.

Re:The metre must be shrinking then...

[edittard]

So the whole of Europe got their asses kicked ... by a hobbit?

Re:The metre must be shrinking then...

[somersault]

"The meter has a long history"

Your posting privileges have been revoked for 2 months, or until such time as you show the adequate remorse necessary to prove that you are sorry for such a shameless pun.

Re:The metre must be shrinking then...

[Da Fokka]

Even worse. A French hobbit.

Re:The metre must be shrinking then...

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> or until such time as you show the adequate remorse necessary

How do you define "adequate"? Sorry to be lawyerly here, but you can't leave it so vague. Do you have a metric?

Kilogram Reference Losing Weight

[MrYotsuya]

It's not losing weight, it's losing mass!. The kilogram is not a measure of weight, but mass. Silly pound-centric editors :p

Re: Kilogram Reference Losing Weight

[swillden]

It's not losing weight, it's losing mass!

Really? Wow, that's even bigger news! The kilogram reference is losing mass but somehow maintaining weight!! Is this unexplained increase in the Earth's gravitational field localized or general? What strange phenomenon is increasing gravity by the precise amount required to offset the reduced mass?

This observation of yours is going to require us to rethink large parts of physics.

obligatory...

[abes]

but don't worry, it will regain the weight after a couple of months.

Possible reason?

[robably]

Maybe it's because of where they weighed it - the strength of gravity is not the same all over the planet, and I'm guessing it can change in one place over time due to the movement of the Earth's outer core and give a different result.

Re:Possible reason?

[shawnce]

The simplest way is to use a balance and since the two sides of the balance are in such close proximity to each other any variation of gravity would affect both masses being compared. More complex ways involve measurements of inertia of the masses when a known forces act on the mass.

Re:More fundamental standards

[AvitarX]

I read an article about this.

It is apparently really hard to get the right amount of atoms reliably and constantly. This is why mass is still using a reference while time and length have ways to reproduce them in a lab (I believe it is measuring the speed of light, and the waves coming ff some substance that is heated up).

There is some work being done making spheres with a silicone chrystal structure, but the margin of error is a few hundred atoms (molecules?), and they wanted it down to around 50. This was a few years ago, things may have changed.

The Faster We Go, The Rounder We Get

[Doc Ruby]

By Relativity, we must all be accelerating. How much more energy in the universe does 1:1E9 extra mass represent? Since that's probably more than in the equivalent 50ug, there's probably mass missing from all over the place.

Who's converting our extra mass to energy? This great criminal must be found before we all blueshift past the event horizon!

Or, this is just the greatest museum heist Paris has ever seen.

Original article

[Toinou]

The study comes from the BIPM ( international bureau for weights and measures) , and here is the original article : http://www.bipm.org/en/scientific/mass/verifications.html. In fact it seems to be very old news since the study is carried every 40 years and the last one was in 1992, according to the BIPM :

On three occasions, roughly 40 years apart, the mass of the official copies, the national prototypes and the working standards of the BIPM have been compared with the mass of the international prototype. [...] the last of these occasions (1988-1992) [...]

Not any more

[benhocking]

A meter is defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458th of a second.

Re:Not any more

[flyingfsck]

So time is speeding up then?

Re:Not any more

[ArsonSmith]

Ok, I got a flash light and a dirt devil. Anyone have a watch? Preferably with a seconds hand. Lets check how accurate this is.

Re:Not any more

[Anonymous Coward]

Sir, you are suggesting caesium is responsible for obesity. I find that rather hard to believe.

I am finally able to answer the dreaded question..

[this great guy]

The wife: Don't you think I am gaining weight ?
Me: No honey, it's just the kilogram that is getting lighter.

Re:Mass?

[djmurdoch]

I doubt there's any equipment sensitive enough to detect weight difference in an object that was moved several feet but there is a change.

According to the back of this envelope here, the weight change from raising a kilogram by one metre would be
about equivalent to reducing its mass by about 3 parts in 10^7, i.e. 300 micrograms. The article says the measured loss was around 50 micrograms. So I guess there is equivalent sensitive enough to measure that.

Unless I was off by a few orders of magnitude...

hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Date: September 16, 62002

Location: God's Court

"God": My angels, we have a problem. The Universe we created 6000 years ago is about to die.

"Angel 1": Holy shit dude, you suck. You were supposed to create the universe for eternity. This is like, what the fifth time?

"Angel 2": What are the humans figuring it out again?

"God": Well, frankly, yes. A few are close, again. They keep learning as we expected, but we didn't account for how fast they would learn. All these exponentials. As you all know, the fabric of their reality only works as long as no consciousness figures out how I did it. Once they do, we are morally obligated to treat them as alive.

"Angel 1": Can't we just fuck with them again? You know, turn off a few suns or create another particle or something?

"God": (Sighing deeply) We don't have much choice. We have to do something sublte, yet significant... Bob, would you go ahead and start changing how mass is calculated. Make it something that will be hard to find.

Angel 2 smiles, and turns around to his machine, and starts typing furiously...


sudo cp /var/lib/reality/core/constants/MassCalulator.rb /tmp/MassCalulator.rb.orig
sudo emacs /var/lib/reality/core/constants/MassCalulator.rb
sudo /usr/sbin/reload_constants.rb


The screens shift slightly, a few numbers flutter

"Angel 2": It is done, Joe.

"Angel 1": Hey, who wants to grab a beer?

--
My future is coming on;think twice, that's my only advice;Tóg do chroísa. Tar trí na stoirmeacha.

Bogus story, I think

[fm6]

This entire story (which has appeared on a lot of general news sites, but no science news sites) is probably just a case of a reporter misunderstanding something a scientist said. According to the UK NPL site, fluctuations in the physical objects used to define fundamental metric units has always been a problem. Back when they were created, the ideal material for them seemed to be a hard, dense iridium-platinum alloy. This turned out to be a nasty mistake: the alloy is slightly radioactive, which means that some of its mass flies off into space all the time. No mystery there.

This is why most fundamental units are now based on natural constants. For example, the meter used to be the distance between two notches on a platinum-iridium stick. (Before that, it was defined as 1 ten-millionth of a line that goes from the equator to the north pole; except they miscalculated the length of the line!) Now it's based on how far light travels in some tiny amount of time. But there's no consensus as to the best way to get rid of the physical kilogram.

In other words, all we have here is a clueless reporter trying to fill up a slow news day.

Eat that, Eurotrash!!

[commodoresloat]

Proof at last that the imperial system of weights and measures is superior to that silly "metric" fad....

The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction?

[AllTheGoodNamesWereT]

This was in the news in mid-2003. On June 3 of that year, the Los Angeles Times ran a very funny column by Crispin Sartwell ("Crispin Sartwell teaches philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art") titled "Kilo Crisis Could Bring Down the Universe," which is unfortunately no longer available for free on their website. Here's an excerpt:

The kilogram is defined as the weight of the standard cylinder, whatever it may be. It is logically impossible for the kilo cylinder to lose or gain weight, at least within the metric system of measurement, because it is itself the standard by which all weights must be judged.

Thus it is impossible to "discover" that the cylinder has lost weight. The instruments by which the cylinder is weighed are wrong because the cylinder itself, by definition, is always right. Indeed, it is possible that the rest of the material in the universe, including the silicon atom, has become slightly heavier. But it is not possible that the weight of that cylinder has changed.

[....]

Now one suspects that in the long run the kilogram cylinder will continue to shed atoms. By my calculations (or rather, those of my wife, who can do stuff like multiply), at a rate of 50 micrograms per century, the cylinder will disappear entirely in 200 billion years.

Then the kilogram itself will disappear, which entails that all objects will weigh an infinite number of kilograms: Any given feather or dust mote will be infinitely heavy. And, at that point, the universe will collapse under the influence of infinite gravity into a disk about the size of a lentil, inhaling everything into a dimensional wormhole. And that will suck, with infinite force and acceleration.

In other words, that standard kilo platinum-iridium cylinder is the smoking gun, the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.

Re:They should redefine a kilogram

[Falladir]

I'm pretty sure that the reason this hasn't been done is that G is not known precisely enough. It's an ironic state of affairs: of all the universal constants, G was the first to be identified (by which I mean that its significance was understood) and measured, and remains the least precisely known.

obvious ploy by us government

[drfireman]

Shave a little off the kilogram reference, everyone who measures their weight in kilos gains a little. US residents are largely unaffected, and it helps squelch stories about the American obesity epidemic. I'll bet if you turn the Secretary of Health and Human Services upside-down, 50 micrograms of metal shavings drops right to the floor.

Dyslexics Untie

[pipingguy]

I just want to know what a klingongram is; a measure of mass or a method of communication.

Re:I like the US customary system

[John Hasler]

"The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!"

Your car is burning 63 gallons every eighth of a mile. And you like it. Ok...

It must not lose mass!

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Who cares if it loses weight. It just must not lose mass. kg is a unit of **mass**, not weight.

Re:It must not lose mass!

[ArsonSmith]

I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation.

Re:Why don't we just do again what we did for the

[Entropius]

If we did physics because it was easy we'd be art history majors.

Re:Inertia

[Guppy06]

They're working on it.

Re:General relativity

[zippthorne]

I blame global warming, myself. If only the US had ratified Kyoto, this wouldn't be happening.

I predict...

[Tablizer]

...an Al Gore film about this someday.

The funniest part

[aepervius]

Is that the pouind is defined as 1/2.2 Kg. In other word the two last country of earth resisting the introduction of SI, are using SI as reference.... It might be old news for many here, but I can't stop laughing at the irony.