The International Conference of Heads of Metrology Institutes has announced that the kilogram will not be pegged to the cylinder made of 90% platinum and 10% iridium from 2019.
- The new artefacts must be derived from the constants of nature that are all interdependent.
- These include constants such as the Planck constant.
- Planck constant is the ratio of the electromagnetic radiation from a photon to its frequency and the charge of an electron.
- Presently a salt-shaker-sized cylinder housed at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM), Paris and weighing exactly a kilogram served as the definition of the measure.
- National Physical Laboratory of India too has a replica of this, since 1957, and it has served as the reference for a variety of industries to keep their weights accurate.
