Alien practical joke?

[nancylebov]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/16/2033951.htm

A riddle: When is a kilogram that is no longer a kilogram still a kilogram?

Answer: When the chunk of metal that serves as the official international standard for the kilogram, under triple lock-and-key in France since 1889, inexplicably sheds a little weight.

As far as I can tell, all the obvious explanations have been looked at, and the official kilogram is being compared to other kilograms made at the same time in the same way and stored under the same conditions, so it isn't a matter of gravity changing or somesuch.

I don't know if anyone has checked for the shape of the missing 50 micrograms--that might provide a clue, nor do I know what it would take to knock 50 micrograms off platinum.

Sometime before 2010, he said, the mysteriously shrinking cylinder will be replaced with a new-and-improved model, a perfect sphere measuring 93 millimetres in diameter and made of pure silicon-28.

"The advantage of silicon-28 is that it is stable. The mass does not change over time," said Dr Davis.

So if the silicon sphere starts shrinking too, I guess that's more reason to think it's aliens.

Any other examples of intractable weirdness?

Comments

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

The gods are not crazy they're higher than kites?

I knew this weight loss fad would get ridiculous?

Platinum eating bacteria?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Platinum-Iridium alloy releasing absorbed bits of atmosphere. Radioactive decay due to an unusually high percentage of Pt-190 which is decaying into Osmium-186. Sulfur corrosion in handling and removal by the cleaning process.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

But what's correct and what's the evidence for it? I grant that a handling error seems the most likely since it's only one of the bars.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Well if I was one of the scientists wondering about it I would do every non-destructive test I could think of. Any test. Measure the radioactivity vs. the other standard weights. Test the surface it has been sitting on with mass spectroscopy. Test the air around it. Try to find a chemist to check and see if there might be some unanticipated long term catalytic action. Heck, if there is no danger of inducing radioactivity put it through an X-ray to see if it really is made out of what we think it is made out of.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

And do a careful examination of the surface in case a little bit got knocked or corroded off.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Oh and the BBC has a nice article with a idea I had not considered. Perhaps the other kilos are gaining due to atmospheric mercury or the hydrogen from the solvents used to clean them. Since they are handled more often than the international standard kilogram.

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

>>The gods are not crazy; they're higher than kites!<<

What song is that from again?

[(Anonymous)]

Leslie Fish's "The Gods Are Not Crazy" from the Chicksaw Mountain tape.

Drink, drink to Charliue Fort's memory
Marvelous doings and marvelous sights
Drink, drink we may as well join them
The Gods are not crazy they're higher than kites

[zenlizard]

Gravity shifting would have no effect, since we're talking about mass, not weight.

Speed approaching the boundry where you start having to consider relativistic effects would, though.

And as far as examples of intractable weirdness go, well, I'm still around.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

We're talking about mass, but how did they test it? Weighing is the usual method. What are the alternatives? Test its inertia? Is that practical in a 1-G (more or less :-) ) field?

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

They periodically test it against the standard weights that were made to match it using a balance scale of some sort.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

The meter is no longer based on a particular meter stick, and other units have become based on reproducible laboratory measurements, but the kilogram remains as the only standard that depends upon a lump of metal.

My undergraduate lab partner and dear friend, Dick Steiner of NIST, is among those working toward a new mass standard based upon electrical measurements (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/electrokilogram.htm), rather than upon a physical object in a vault in Paris.

The guys described above, who want to make a silicon sphere with a carefully counted number of atoms in it, are rivals of Dick's "watt balance method" team.

Streaming video of a talk Dick gave at Fermilab is here (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/images/05EEEL014_E_Kilogram_HR.jpg).

Just the Powerpoint slides: here (http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_03/Lectures/Colloquium/presentations/070801Steiner.ppt).

Intractable Weirdness

[sgsguru.livejournal.com]

Examples are all over the place:

• The Aikido "unbendable arm" trick. (See me at a con for a demo.)
• Firewalking
• Practically anything to do with the brain or nervous system
• Black holes

The Fortean Times collects all kinds of stuff, from the merely strange to the totally inexplicable. Reliability varies, of course.

Re: Intractable Weirdness

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

Actually fire walking is not that weird or unexplained. Has to do with heat capacity, speed, thermal conductivity, and the fire not actually being stoked up. Heck, I've put my fingers into an open flame. As long as it is done quickly, no harm done.

Re: Intractable Weirdness

[sgsguru.livejournal.com]

There seem to be two kinds of firewalking. One is a simple matter of heat conductivity; I've seen stage magicians do this. Two steps on a carefully set up bed of charcoal briquettes.

The other (weird) version involves *much* longer walks, higher temperatures, and less uniform fuel. In one photo I saw, the firepit looked to be 25-30 feet long and filled with coals from burning tree branches. There have been a few investigations; the conclusions were basically "We have no idea. Need more data".

Re: Intractable Weirdness

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I'm familiar with the unbendable arm--I thought it was explained by people not having a conscious understanding of how to use their strength so that visualization or at least not trying hard works.

Now that you mention it, the weirdest piece of public information might be those Buddhist monks who sat while they burnt to death in protest of the Viet Nam war--I can't imagine how they were able to remain either still or upright.

Another take on the replacement Kilogram sphere.

[(Anonymous)]

"It's probably the roundest item ever made by hand. 'If the earth were this round, Mount Everest would be four meters tall,' Dr. Nicolaus said. An intriguing characteristic of this smooth ball is that there is no way to tell whether it is spinning or at rest. Only if a grain of dust lands on the surface is there something for the eye to track."

Whatever would an alien species make of the Silicon Sphere, I wonder? Would they ever guess its purely philosophical purpose?

A cheering sign that humanity is still progressing toward becoming an Incomprehensible Elder Species.



from http://yudkowsky.net/humor/artifacts.txt