As cheat sheets go, it is a long one. Every four years, a task force of the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA), headquartered in Paris, releases a short-hand description of the ...

The fundamental constants that govern the laws of nature are being determined with increasing accuracy. A new paper outlines the proceedings from this year's Workshop on the Determination of the ...

If scientists had sacred objects, this would be one of them: a single, closely guarded 137-year-old cylinder of metal, housed in a vault outside of Paris. It is a prototype that precisely defines a ...

Detecting or constraining the possible time variations of fundamental physical constants is an important step toward a complete understanding of basic physics and hence the world in which we live. A ...

It doesn’t happen too often, but after a vote that took place earlier today near Paris, science textbooks really will have to be rewritten. At the Congress Chamber in the Palace of Versailles, ...

Constants are supposed to be, well, constant. In physics there are a number of fundamental constants, such as the speed of light, Planck's constant, and the charge of an electron that are essential to ...

Nick van Remortel demystifies natural unit systems — and advises what to do when you see a mass expressed in GeV. Several unit systems for describing the natural world exist. The International System ...

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Robyn Williams: The point about constants in science is that they're supposed to stay, well, constant.

Measurements in physics are funny things. You’d hope that attempts to quantify some of the fundamental properties of the Universe would follow a simple pattern ...

THROUGHOUT MUCH of human history, man has been the measure of many, if not all, things. Lengths were divided up into feet, palms, spans and smaller units derived from the human hand. Other measures ...

Mathematical constants are built from the fabric of mathematics and can be determined a priori: Pi is based on the shape of a circle and can be calculated from numerous equations, e is from the growth ...