Latest Kilogram Stories

Northwest Airlines Cargo has announced that it will reduce its fuel surcharges in certain markets in response to the recent decline in the price of jet fuel, effective October 20, 2008, subject to government approvals where required. The surcharges for all domestic shipments will be reduced from $0.46 to $0.42 per pound. Trans-Atlantic fuel surcharges for shipments from the US to Europe, Africa and the Middle East will be reduced from $1.10 to $1.05 per kilogram. The surcharges for...

Just as test pilots push planes to explore their limits, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are probing the newest microscope technology to further improve measurement accuracy at the nanoscale. Better nanoscale measurements are critical for setting standards and improving production in the semiconductor and nanomanufacturing industries.This new microscope technology uses helium ions to generate the signal used to image extremely small objects, a...

Change should have little impact on nuclear weapons complexThe kilogram is losing weight and many international scientists, including some at Sandia National Laboratories, agree that it's time to redefine it.Scientists are hoping to redefine the kilogram by basing it on standards of universal constants rather than on an artifact standard.The International Prototype Kilogram (IPK) or "Le Grand K," made in the 1880s, is a bar of platinum-iridium alloy kept in a vault near Paris."The idea is to...

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...

At the core of ESA's LISA Pathfinder mission sit two small hearts. Each is a cube, just 5 centimetres across. Together they will allow LISA Pathfinder to lay the foundations for future space-based measurements that investigate the very core of Einstein's General Relativity. A cornerstone of relativity is the concept of a frame of reference. This is a set of bodies relative to which any motion can be measured. Without a reference frame, no motion through space can be detected. Scientists...