Wednesday, July 2, 2008

The Roundest Object Ever Has Been Created


Recently a team of scientists have developed the roundest sphere possible. It has never really occurred to me that a sphere could be less round or more round than another, but apparently it can. And this object is the roundest!

You may be asking yourself, "What is the point of creating this round object? How will it serve the world we live in?" Well, this sphere was created in the hopes of solving the "kilogram problem". This problem, you see, comes from the fact that "the kilogram is the only remaining standard of measurement tied to a single physical object: a 120-year-old lump of platinum and iridium that sits in a vault outside of Paris, France." This is an issue, because the various copies of this lump of mineral are changing relative size and shape, thus, the kilogram is no longer a reliable or exact measurement. This extremely round sphere just may be the answer to this "kilogram problem".

Read more about it here.

No comments: