Then what are they grinding? A figment of their imagination? Hallucinations?
Serious science? When scientists start making more intelligent sounding statements, then it will be easier to take science seriesly.
OK, for the confused:
They are making reference objects that can be put on precise scales to calibrate the scales.
You can’t do that by making something, and rubbing off bits until it weighs the right amount, because you need a scale to weigh it, and that scale needs to be calibrated.
So you make something of a material that of a known density, and make it to a known volume. You choose a sphere because its volume can be measured by only one measurement (diameter).
Of course, you need to calibrate the “”calipers” you measure it with, but that kind of calibration is absolute, with devices that use known wavelengths of certain atomic vibrations. They count the number of wavelengths across the diameter.
Then, you put the ball on the “mother” scale, and cabibrate the scale. That can be used to weigh test items that are sent in from other precision scale owners, so they can be told how much their sample weighed. Or, the balls may be taken on tour, rented out. (Precision instrument calibration is a big business.)
You see, brilliant scientists and engineers rarely do things that are dumb. It’s just that news reporters can make smart stuff sound dumb with inadequate reporting. Like here, when they take down other people’s quotes and explanations, instead of actually explaining the concept.
And when they say that the standard won’t depend on a physical object, they mean that they will no longer have an uncertain lump in a glass case that is arbitrarily defined as a “kilogram.”
They have an object that is known to have a kilograms’s worth of Silicon atoms And atoms are of known mass by definition, with a known number of subatomic particles in each.
Essentially, “mass” is just a way of saying how many atoms are in a thing.