There is a similar problem in setting the standard<\/a> for the kilogram: More than a century ago, a small metal cylinder was forged in London and sent to a leafy suburb of Paris. The cylinder was about the size of a salt shaker and made of an alloy of platinum and iridium, an advanced material at the time.<\/p>\n In Paris, scientists polished and weighed it carefully, until they determined that it was exactly one kilogram, around 2.2 pounds. Then, by international treaty, they declared it to be the international standard.<\/p>\n Since 1889, the year the Eiffel Tower opened, that cylinder has been the standard against which every other kilogram on the planet has been judged. But that’s creating problems. According to scientists, the cylinder’s mass appears to be changing.<\/p>\n As it stands, the entire world’s system of measurement hinges on the cylinder. If it is dropped, scratched or otherwise defaced, it would cause a global problem. “If somebody sneezed on that kilogram standard, all the weights in the world would be instantly wrong,” says Richard Steiner, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Sneezing on the kilogram standard may blow a flew molecules off and make all the other weights in the world slightly incorrect. Sneezing on an atheist’s ethical framework completely blows it away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A major problem for soft atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens is that they insist on talking in terms of right and wrong in spite of the fact that they have no objective standard by which to measure the … Continue reading ![\"Add](\"http:\/\/media.npr.org\/assets\/news\/2009\/08\/19\/Kilogram\/prototype.jpg?t=1250629494&s=2\")
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