Why scientists are redefining the kilogram

Re:Why scientists are redefining the kilogram by jfoutz on Thursday October 26, 2017 @01:51PM (#15561294)

> Just as a universe where all distances are multiplied by two is indistinguishable from the current universe.

Uh, wouldn't you have a speed of light problem? I think most of the fundamental forces are all inverse square laws, which would also make things weird.

I'm sure you have a much better understanding that my casual interest. But, uh, simple linear scaling seems detectable.

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Re:Why scientists are redefining the kilogram by lmm on Thursday October 26, 2017 @02:34PM (#15561677)

I mean a universe in which the speed of light was multiplied by two, and so was every linear distance measure.

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Re:Why scientists are redefining the kilogram by jfoutz on Thursday October 26, 2017 @04:02PM (#15562481)

so the earth is twice as big, but the same mass? seems like there are some detectable changes there. but maybe you're increasing mass in a really tricky way. it'll need to be more than double to have the same effect. at a given distance.

The other one that seems like it would be tough is strength of a magnetic field. inverse cube law, rather than inverse square. seems really hard to do something and get the same answers.

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Re:Why scientists are redefining the kilogram by jfoutz on Thursday October 26, 2017 @06:20PM (#15563706)

i'm an idiot. by distance you mean something more like a pure scalar value. if you double all the secret constants in the universe, we can't tell the difference.

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Re:Why scientists are redefining the kilogram by fooker on Thursday October 26, 2017 @11:24PM (#15565474)

You double k1 and k2. Now something involving k1*k1/k2 is twice it was before.

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