美国国家公共电台 NPR Say Au Revoir To That Hunk Of Metal In France That Has Defined The Kilogram

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

So every time you weigh something, whether it's coffee or bananas - I'm not sure what you're weighing - you might be doing it in pounds - well, whatever you're doing, you're unknowingly relying on a global system of measurement that has this long and storied history. That history is about to enter a new chapter. For the first time in more than a century, scientists are about to redefine the kilogram. Here's NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce.

NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE 1: I wanted to get up close and personal with the kilogram, so I went to Maryland to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, our nation's premier 2 agency for the science of measurement. In a building there, there's a massive elevator.

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GREENFIELDBOYCE: It takes me down to a basement. I have to put on a hairnet, booties, a white lab coat. Zeina Kubarych unlocks a door to a secure, climate-controlled lab. Only a few keys exist.

ZEINA KUBARYCH: Three people have access to this room.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Over in a corner, I see small cylinders 4 of a silver-looking metal. It's actually a platinum-iridium alloy 5 - the sexy, futuristic material of the 19th century. That's when these cylinders were forged. Each cylinder 3 is under two old-fashioned glass bell jars.

KUBARYCH: So these are our national standard kilograms.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: They are exact copies of the official kilogram held in France - a hunk of metal that is kept in a vault 6 outside of Paris. Its weight is the definition of a kilogram - a little over two pounds. This piece of metal is simply called the kilogram or, affectionately, Le Grand K. After signing the Treaty of the Meter in 1875, the U.S. got these two copies of it.

KUBARYCH: That's what we use as the basis of our mass dissemination 7 system in the United States.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Let's say you're in the supermarket and the cashier weighs your bag of apples. You only know the scale is accurate because the state measurement lab checked it using a certified 8 mass. How does the state lab know that its certified masses are the correct weight? Because they sent them here to Maryland to be compared to our nation's kilograms. Who else turns to this lab? Pharmaceutical 9 companies, airplane manufacturers, makers 10 of scientific instruments, anybody who needs to make sure their precise measurements aren't out of whack 11.

KUBARYCH: It pretty much spans most of the sectors 12 of the U.S. industry.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Our national kilograms occasionally get flown to France to be compared to Le Grand K. I would say they get the white glove treatment, but...

KUBARYCH: We don't touch them. We don't even try to touch them with gloved hands.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Kubarych says the metal artifacts are carefully picked up with a special tool wrapped in filter paper. A tiny scratch in the metal or a fingerprint 13 could throw off the weight. And that is the big problem with basing your entire system on comparing pieces of metal. If Le Grand K gets heavier or lighter 14, if it absorbs atoms of something from the air, then the definition of the kilogram literally 15 changes. And that, theoretically, affects every single measurement of mass in the world that is based on it. Scientists believe this has been happening. Le Grand K seems to now weigh slightly less than its official copies - a difference that's like a tiny fraction of the weight of a snowflake. Still, for folks who are really into this stuff, this is disturbing. Maybe some teeny fluctuation 16 won't matter to you when you buy your coffee, but in the world of science, it's a disaster to try to understand reality using measurements that are constantly shifting. So on November 16, there will be a vote. The General Conference on Weights and Measures will meet in Versailles. This international group is expected to redefine the kilogram. Kubarych is going just to watch.

KUBARYCH: It's fantastic. It's great. It's history in the making. We are changing a mass realization 17 system that we've had for 129 years. This is a huge event.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: The new kilogram will be based on fundamental, unchanging constants of nature - the speed of light, the vibrations 18 of a cesium atom used to tick off time and Planck's constant, which is central to quantum physics. Stephan Schlamminger has been working hard at another lab here to make that happen.

STEPHAN SCHLAMMINGER: I think what we do here now is we finish something that has begun probably before French Revolution.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Way back in those revolutionary times, Enlightenment thinkers hated the world's hodgepodge of measurement systems, each one based on some random 19 object like the local duke's foot. Their radical 20 vision was to create something rational and universal or, as they put it...

SCHLAMMINGER: For all times for all people.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: The result was the metric system. Its measurement of length, the meter, was already redefined decades ago.

SCHLAMMINGER: So the meter, at some point, was also an artifact.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: The meter was literally a metal bar in France. Its length was supposed to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator. Schlamminger says as physics advanced, scientists were able to ditch the metal bar and define the meter in terms of unalterable features of the universe.

SCHLAMMINGER: You just defined a meter as the distance that light travels in one over 300-millionth of a second. And this is the idea of going from artifact to a fundamental constant.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Now, it's finally the kilogram's turn. Researchers spent years creating an elaborate kind of new scale.

SCHLAMMINGER: Let's walk inside here.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Schlamminger shows me a device the size of a small car with all kinds of shiny metal parts. In the future, to see if a hunk of metal really weighs one kilogram, it can just go in here. Schlamminger and two of his colleagues are so devoted 21 to redefining the kilogram that they recently had the numbers of Planck's constant tattooed 22 on their bodies. Jon Pratt shows me his tattooed arm. He says convincing the world to switch to a new kilogram was really hard.

JON PRATT: There were plenty of committees and fisticuffs and hemming 23 and hawing on this, so we knew what we were in for. We knew that it was going to be painful, and we all agreed we'd get inked with the number when we got it done.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: He expects the vote on Friday to be unanimous, and humanity will finally be free from the unbearable 24 uncertainty 25 of Le Grand K.

Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.

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