IF YOU can鈥檛 measure it, you can鈥檛 manage it. That dictum runs through our society, from public health to education. It applies especially to science. Innumerable experiments conducted every day depend on precise measurements that ultimately rest on just a handful of standard units.
These are now specified with astounding precision, but those charged with their maintenance still aren鈥檛 satisfied 鈥� for good reason. For example, the lumps of metal that define the kilogram vary by up to 50 micrograms, an embarrassingly large error. Hence their quest to tie all units to fundamental particles and constants (see 鈥�How to measure anything 鈥� and fix the foundations of science鈥�).
The branch of science behind this, metrology, is often dismissed as tedious, but there is reason to think that it is about to become very interesting. Now that metrologists are making measurements on particles like photons and electrons, they are entering the quantum realm where measurement itself is a poorly defined concept.
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What this means has divided physicists for almost a century (see 鈥�Probability is as useful to physics as flat-Earth theory鈥�). But new experiments and techniques have always been the harbingers of revolution: perhaps metrology can finally give the quantum philosophers something new to talk about.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淢ismeasuring metrology鈥�
