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Missing Mass

Entry 608, on 2007-09-14 at 18:25:41 (Rating 1, Science)

A report from Paris says that the 118 year old cylinder used as the standard for the kilogram has lost weight. There are many copies of the standard mass and they aren't changing, even though they are made from the same materials and kept in the same conditions. The weight loss isn't exactly what you would call a huge amount: 50 micrograms out of the total weight of 1 kg is just a 0.000005% change, but this is still significant.

Mysterious scientific puzzles like this are always intriguing, but no one seems to have a good hypothesis to explain what's happening. There are three broad possibilities: first, this could be a mis-reporting of what's really happening because science reporting is notorious for its inaccuracy; second, there could be a relatively prosaic explanation, possibly related to the materials used in the construction of the mass; and third, there might be an undiscovered or poorly understood phenomenon happening, maybe something related to quantum physics.

Of course, the first and second explanations are the most likely. Maybe a small amount of a radioactive element contaminated the mass and it has decayed over 100 years, or maybe the conditions aren't as precise as is assumed and there has been some sort of chemical degradation, or maybe the mass hasn't been treated as well as it should and some has "rubbed off" or maybe there was an error in the measurement procedure.

If there turns out to be some mysterious cause for this it would be really interesting but it would still be interesting if there is a mundane explanation. Science places a lot of reliance on accurate measurement and discovering new ways that things can go wrong is always valuable.

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