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1米本应是从极点到赤道距离的一千万分之一。但1米事实上没有那么长。获奖科学读物作者肯·奥尔德在一本书里说,两位在18世纪受命算出1米有多长的法国天文学家在计算中出现了小小的失误,因而使1米比实际应有的距离短了0.2毫米,更糟的是,这两位科学家知道自己弄错了,但由于不知道怎么改正,他们就把错误掩盖起来。也就是说,这个错误一直保留到今天。
The 1 metre should be 10 millionth of the distance from the pole to the equator. But 1 meter is not actually that long. The author of the award-winning scientific reading, Ken Olde, said in a book that the two French astronomers who were asked to calculate 1 meter in the 18th century had made small mistakes in their calculations, thus making it 1 meter more than they should actually have. The distance was shorter by 0.2 mm. What’s worse, the two scientists knew they were mistaken, but because they didn’t know how to correct it, they concealed their mistakes. In other words, this error has remained until today.