Meanwhile Apropos Of Nothing- The Weight Of A Fingerprint

Apparently the weight of a fingerprint is 50 micrograms, I now know this because THE Kilogram, not a Kilogram, but THE Kilogram is mysteriously losing weight, which is now equal to the weight of said fingerprint-

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.

“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.”

But don’t expect the slimmed-down kilo to have any effect, other than possibly envy, on wary waistline-watchers: 50 micrograms is roughly equivalent to the weight of a fingerprint.

Yes “the masses among them are slowly drifting apart” the centre cannot hold etc. science is not happy because they do need a solid reference mass-

At a November meeting of scientists in Paris, an advisory panel on measurements will present possible steps toward basing the kilogram and other measures — like Kelvin for temperature, and the mole for amount — on more precise calculations. Ultimately, policy makers from around the world would have to agree to any change.

Many measurements have undergone makeovers over the years. The meter was once defined as roughly the distance between scratches on a bar, a far cry from today’s high-tech standard involving the distance that light travels in a vacuum.

One of the leading alternatives for a 21st-century kilogram is a sphere made out of a Silicon-28 isotope crystal, which would involve a single type of atom and have a fixed mass.

And while this is not my usual oeuvre how can you resist finding out the ‘weight of a fingerprint’?