slimmer kilo

Yup. That's the way it goes. The official kilo (118 year old ball of metal secured at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures) has slimmed down by 50 micrograms.

As one who's in search for the perfect weight loss solution...this one goes a long way...

clipped from www.wired.com Has the kilogram gone on a diet? Maybe. For some reason, the official kilo — a 118-year-old lump of metal stored in a vault at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures outside Paris — has slimmed down by as much as 50 micrograms in the past century. The solution? Build a better kilogram. Researchers at the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization are cutting, grinding, and polishing a boule — a big crystal — of ultrapure silicon 28 into two baseball-sized spheres (one is for double-checking). Materials scientists are able to measure precisely how many atoms of that silicon isotope are in any given hunk (the completed orb should contain 215 x 1023 atoms). Creating "the roundest object in the world," says CSIRO engineer Katie Green, means technicians have to worry about only one dimension: diameter. Once finished, it will weigh a perfect kilogram. Give or take an atom.