ntt@dciem.UUCP (ntt) (08/16/83)
According to next month's issue of Science 83, the participants in the international Geneva Conference on Weights and Measures in October will adopt a new definition of the meter*; it will be the distance travelled by light in 1/299792458 of a second (in a vacuum, I presume). This will allow 10 times more accurate measurement than the present standard of 1650763.73 wavelengths of certain light from krypton-86, with the new measurements being done by a cesium-133 "atomic clock". *or metre, or metr, or whatever you prefer...