Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli 40

It is quite amusing that the starting point to identifying the heat one was capsaicin, as it stimulates the exact same receptor!!!

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2019 redefinition of the SI base units Updated 2025-07-16

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web.archive.org/web/20181119214326/https://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/CGPM-2018/26th-CGPM-Resolutions.pdf gives it in raw:

the unperturbed ground state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium-133 atom $Δ v_{C s}$ is 9 192 631 770 Hz
the speed of light in vacuum c is 299 792 458 m/s
the Planck constant h is 6.626 070 15 × $1 0^{- 34}$ J s
the elementary charge e is 1.602 176 634 × $1 0^{- 19}$ C
the Boltzmann constant k is 1.380 649 × $1 0^{- 23}$ J/K
the Avogadro constant NA is 6.022 140 76 × $1 0^{23}$ mol
the luminous efficacy of monochromatic radiation of frequency 540 × 1012 Hz, Kcd, is 683 lm/W,

The breakdown is:

actually use some physical constant:
- the unperturbed ground state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium-133 atom $Δ v_{C s}$ is 9 192 631 770 Hz
  Defines the second in terms of caesium-133 experiments. The beauty of this definition is that we only have to count an integer number of discrete events, which is what allows us to make things precise.
- the speed of light in vacuum c is 299 792 458 m/s
  Defines the meter in terms of speed of light experiments. We already had the second from the previous definition.
- the Planck constant h is 6.626 070 15 × $1 0^{- 34}$ J s
  Defines the kilogram in terms of the Planck constant.
- the elementary charge e is 1.602 176 634 × $1 0^{- 19}$ C
  Defines the Coulomb in terms of the electron charge.
arbitrary definitions based on the above just to match historical values as well as possible:
- the Boltzmann constant k is 1.380 649 × $1 0^{- 23}$ J/K
  Arbitrarily defines temperature from previously defined energy (J) to match historical values.
- the Avogadro constant NA is 6.022 140 76 × $1 0^{23}$ mol
  Arbitrarily defines the mol to match historical values. In particular, the kilogram is not an exact multiple of the weight of an atom of hydrogen.
- the luminous efficacy of monochromatic radiation of frequency 540 × 1012 Hz, Kcd, is 683 lm/W
  Arbitrarily defines the Candela in terms of previous values to match historical records. The most useless unit comes last as you'd expect.