They will be the earth's roundest spheres, crafted by Australian scientists as part of an international hunt to find a new global standard kilogram.Ever since scientists discovered that the current standard -- a bar of platinum and iridium held in a French vault since 1889 -- was slowly deteriorating, the search has been on for a replacement.
Using a single crystal of silicon-28 grown by Russian and German scientists over three years, a team of Sydney scientists and engineers will grind and polish two silvery balls, each weighing precisely one kilogram, with imperfections of less than 35 millionths of a millimeter.
"We are doing everything to really create a perfect object. It's not only near-perfect in roundness, but also the crystal purity, the atomic species and so on," project leader Walter Giardini told Reuters on Friday.
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