Ian Robinson, head of the National Physical Laboratory’s engineering measurement division said, “One key reason for doing this work is to provide international security. If the Pavillon de Breteuil” — where the IPK is stored — “burned down tomorrow and the kilogram in its vaults melted, we would have no reference left for the world’s metric weights system. There would be chaos. The current definition of the kilogram is the weight of that cylinder in Paris, after all. And that’s just not good enough for international science.” [x]
