My first thought is that I should not presume that someone reading this will know what Metrology is. OTOH, I wonder if anyone would be reading this if they didn't understand what Metrology means or were good enough at research to look it up.
I will presume that my question is more of a comment on my state of mind at 70. Either way, I found the article fascinating. But instead of going in-depth into the article, I'd like to provide an example of one meteorologist's thoughts.
Many years ago, when the world first considered using "fundamental constants" to provide "the standard" for determining the value of the primary, basic units of measurement, my first thought was, "Yes, I can see that works!" My second thought was, "But if we're using the fundamental constants to measure everything, how could we know if one of those constants changes? If everything was based on them, we would need to have some way to determine whether one of them changed, and we'd need to know whether they all were changing relative to one another; thus, there is no change. Or, if one changed but not others, what could we use as a standard to make that determination. The article mentions that many think that these constants change. I personally have not read any of the theories behind that, but I'm also not sure that they would. Nevertheless, it's hard to believe that they will never change, and eventually, it will happen. Of course, not in my lifetime. lol
But as to how we would know if it happened, I didn't know then, and I also didn't know until I read this article in Quanta Magazine: "The First Nuclear Clock Will Test if Fundamental Constants Change"
<https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-first-nuclear-clock-will-test-if-fundamental-constants-change-20240904/?mc_cid=57a781a76c&mc_eid=5b5ae44319>
Yum Yum! Articles like this keep my 70-year-old mind young! :-) My mind will return to this article periodically until I own it! :-)
