All articles tagged with #bipm
World powers are pushing to establish a lunar reference time via the BIPM to account for the Moon’s slightly faster time from gravity, a move driven by upcoming lunar missions and the need for precise navigation and communications; a plan to have Moon clocks report to the BIPM could mirror Earth’s UTC, potentially paving the way for standardised time on other celestial bodies like Mars, with a vote on the proposal due in October.
After a decade of cross‑Atlantic replication led by NIST, the new measurement of the gravitational constant G disagrees with both the 2013 BIPM result and CODATA’s current value, highlighting that Big G is still the least precisely known fundamental constant and that the true value remains unresolved despite improved methods (including a blinded measurement to reduce bias).
A decade-long effort by NIST to measure the universal gravitational constant G, using a torsion-balance setup and multiple test masses, produced a value of 6.67387×10^-11 m^3/(kg·s^2) that is 0.0235% lower than the BIPM's result, sustaining a small but persistent discrepancy among precision measurements. An unusual blinding step— a colleague secretly altered some data to hide the true result until the envelope reveal—meant Schlamminger only learned the outcome at the end. Although the difference is too small to affect everyday life, it keeps G as an open question and underscores the need for further, careful measurements.