The speed of light: Now (slightly) different

By Jesse Singal

I'm late to this Popular Science blog post from last week, but it's pretty interesting:

Did you feel that? Gravity just got a little weaker. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has just posted the latest internationally recommended adjustments to the values for the fundamental constants of nature. The results: Gravity is a bit weaker, the electromagnetic force a smidgeon stronger, and the whole of physics a little less uncertain.

The NIST and its international partners reconsider the values placed upon the fundamental constants every four years to take into account advances in technology and science that beget better, more accurate values for things like the speed of light, the Newtonian constant of gravitation (G), the Planck constant, and other values preceded by famous names.

I really like the symbolism here. We non-scientists often view the practice of science in terms of breakthroughts — the next wonder-drug or ultra-speedy CPU or fuel-efficient car. But this gradual process by which NIST updates what we think we know, presumably getting us closer and closer to the "real" values of these constants (but never exactly reaching them), is a nice illustration of how the process really works.

Yes, there are and will be breakthroughs, but they require the sort of painstaking work in which one-trillionth of one unit of measurement matters a great deal.