The International System of Units (SI) is being fundamentally revised. The foremost expert committee in the world of metrology, the International Committee for Weights and Measures (Comité international des poids et mesures, CIPM), issued its fundamental recommendation for this development at its recently concluded annual assembly. It is hoped that, at their general conference in November 2018, the international community of signatories to the Metre Convention will heed the experts’ advice and provide the physical units with an especially firm foundation – one that consists of the set values of selected fundamental constants. The seven base units will thereby lose their prominent role. Instead, seven fundamental constants will be determined as defining reference entities from which all units can be derived.
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