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Space Science

Our Solar System's Nomenclature Wars 148

Posted by simoniker from the more-futurama-inspired-names-please dept.
RobotRunAmok writes "Plutinos, Centaurs, Cubewanos - the names Detroit has given some of their next gen SUVs? Nope. They are among the many colorful, and, some complain, confusing names which astronomers have given to celestial objects in the last decade. Ever wonder about the system of organization which astronomers use to name new space rocks? Apparently, so have many astronomers, because, according a Yahoo!/Space.com article, it's neither very systematic nor organized. Fear not: some clever star-minded chaps from Oxford and Cambridge have a plan to wring some order from the damp dishrag of astro-nomenclature chaos."
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Our Solar System's Nomenclature Wars More

Our Solar System's Nomenclature Wars

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  • Heh (Score:5, Funny)

    by B3ryllium ( 571199 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @02:12AM (#6752369) Homepage
    Been there, done that, got a QB10 t-shirt.

  • I suggest we rename everything (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Using a numeric system. Let's see... the universe can be 0, stars can be 1, blackholes 2, planets 3, moons 4, asteroids 5, comets 6... That won't be confusing at all.

    • Re:I suggest we rename everything (Score:5, Funny)

      by B3ryllium ( 571199 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @02:19AM (#6752392) Homepage
      Naw. Roman Numerals make it more fun; even better would be mapping hexadecimal to greek letters and using that.

      Omega Omega Epsilon!

      (2 million light-year distant quasar! :)
      • even better would be mapping hexadecimal to greek letters and using that.

        Even better, the Ancient Greeks used their letters as digits too...

        • Even better, the Ancient Greeks used their letters as digits too...

          I guess I could just google for myself, but hey, why not just ask someone who seems to know already...

          How did this work?

          Did alpha = 1, beta = 2, etc., or was there some more complex scheme? How did they distuingish between numbers and letters, for instance when enscribing something like "today we brewed 24 amphoras of beer".

          I'm just curious - if you just chuck me a good link or something I'll be happy :)
          • for instance when enscribing something like "today we brewed 24 amphoras of beer".


            well, beta-delta amphoras don't make much sense, do they?
          • They only used 7 letters to make up all numbers. So it was probably simple for them to differentiate normal words and numbers that were usually not pronouncable, like CDXX, DXXVI, and XXX. Also the Greeks usually wrote a bar over numbers, or wrote them sideways so clear up any confusion. So I imagine that the Romans, standing on the shoulders of the Greeks, had that taken care of in some way by the time they rolled out their own numerical system.
      • I'm sorry... the use of greek letters is patented by SCO, so you'll have to pay $699 to get a licence (for each of the letters).

        • Re:I suggest we rename everything (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Ha ha...yes this is funny because, you know SCO has so much to due with the naming of celestial bodies that the joke is very appropriate. You know, I also think the RIAA will sue you if you send the any of the names over a P2P network and the MPAA will sue you if you make any videos of the night sky.

          Furthermore, Bill Gates has used his evil intergalactic space fleet to extend the Micro$$$$oft monopoly throughout the galaxy. Did I miss anything else that doesn't apply to this topic.

          Thanks.

      • Nah, the whole galaxy would sound like a frickin' frat house.
      • Use base60, Babylon style. Like Roman, no numerals.

        They should just use the Really Big Book of Baby Names to name the stuff.

        Hmm...
        Planet Edsel... Elmer's moon... The Norbert Nebula...

        See--it works.

    • The problem's about distinguishing between the types. What do you call a moon orbiting a moon? Monet? A "thing" that goes around the sun (and earth) in a horse shoe orbit? Monetoid? Moon-sized KBO's.. Farmoons? Pseudoplanets?

      And, what separates planets from asteroids? I suppose planets are round. But asteroids might also, or then not, or, I don't know. Suddenly "Oddball" seems a very descriptive name.

  • I hate these kind of questions. (Score:5, Funny)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 ) <CGP@NOSpAM.ColinGregoryPalmer.net> on Thursday August 21, 2003 @02:20AM (#6752397) Homepage
    Ever wonder about the system of organization which astronomers use to name new space rocks?

    No.

  • Like the old joke (Score:5, Insightful)

    by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @02:22AM (#6752406)
    of the old statue with the inprint "created 274BC".
    Of couse they are not very systematic, because the system itself was just devolped while they were given names.

    And if you really want a non-nonsense way the address them, there are catalogue-numbers and other ways to refer to them without room for misunderstanding...

  • Oh my. (Score:4, Funny)

    by CGP314 ( 672613 ) <CGP@NOSpAM.ColinGregoryPalmer.net> on Thursday August 21, 2003 @02:26AM (#6752420) Homepage
    The origin of the word "cubewano" is perhaps the most extreme example of nomenclative amusement among astronomers.

    Boy those astronomers are some crazy guys. I should invite them to my next rave.

    • Re:Oh my. (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Slashdot News Update ..... Geek disses Astronomer for being lame .... Just released "Irony-o-matic" withdrawn from sale as developers go back to drawing board ....
    • Used to deal with all this stuff, It was especially important to us because we lived in Ireland and so we felt we had to promote Edgeworth's case over that upstart Kuiper. Anyway - now I'm in the US, I work as a software developer and.... I DJ at raves all the time these days.

      truth is stranger than fiction sometimes

  • Fear and terror (Score:5, Insightful)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @02:29AM (#6752436)
    I suppose it's ironic* that the moons of Mars were named fear and terror (phobos and deimos) when in fact it's these distant rocks that should be worrying us. Realising just how many things are now known that periodically cross the Earth's orbit makes me wonder if the past ten thousand years or so of developing civilisation is just a period of unusual stability between ice ages and destructive impacts. Even a relatively small impact with a "soft" comet like body could presumably put enough crap into the atmosphere to create a very long winter. It's a pity that arms development seems more obsessed with fighting the "savage wars of peace" that merely threaten short term stability, and less with designing a delivery system and weapon to take out, or at least deflect, threatening asteroids that could make all the local wars irrelevant in a few seconds.

    *All right, just irrational. Or something.

    • Re:Fear and terror (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Phobos and Deimos are companions to the god Mars. They ride with him into battle, on his chariot of war, spreading unpleasantness. Most of the moons are named that way (for companions to the gods for which their planet is named) . . . all the ones I can think of, at least.
    • Do you know that Phobos and Deimos are the sons of Ares (Mars it's the roman name), god of war, don't you?
    • I think that the names phobos and deimos were selected by the IAU (International Astronomical Union) in an attempt to have some consistency, Mars of course being the god of war. The IAU continues to meet to select names for astronomical features, including topology on the different planets. Carl Sagan writes of having been at such a meeting where "Mons Veneris" was proposed for a particular mountain on Venus and he had to point out that that name was already taken.--TLB

  • Back in the time of Star Control 2 it was simple (Score:5, Informative)

    by jlehtira ( 655619 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @02:29AM (#6752437) Journal

    Constellations with stars named with greek letters alpha, beta etc, and their planets with a single numeral. "Alpha Carinae 3". Moons similiarly, "Alpha Carinae 3 b" or something. Forget about the comets and asteroids, they are random generated and you can bump into them anywhere. As long as things go into a nice tree format it'll be simple.

    A complex heap of space rocks is entirely another matter. Imagine naming computers connected to Internet in a way that would tell their physical location, operating system and connection speeds. Yeah, you could say those change, but so do the space rocks, colliding into each other or dancing around in gravity wells.

    Reminds me of the good chaps in Lapland, where they have place names like "vittumaisenoja", "fucking goddamn river"..

    • Re:Back in the time of Star Control 2 it was simpl (Score:4, Informative)

      by CyberBill ( 526285 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @02:38AM (#6752466)
      I dont think they are talking about singular objects, they still name comments and asteroids pretty randomly at first, then the person who discovers it gets to name it (typically). Like Shoemacher-Levy 9... Stars usually have two names, actually. One is the constellation its in followed by a letter or number to signify its brightness. And the other is a 'given' name, usually after greek mythology or something. So you could have Orion-beta which could be the start Beatleguise(sp). Oh, and I dont actually think beatleguise is orion-beta, but.. you get the idea.

      What the article was talking about was the difference between a NEO (Near Earth Object), a Kuiper belt object (really far away), etc. Personally I dont see what all the fuss is about. :)

      -Bill

      • Re:Back in the time of Star Control 2 it was simpl (Score:5, Informative)

        by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @04:19AM (#6752752) Journal
        What the article was talking about was the difference between a NEO (Near Earth Object), a Kuiper belt object (really far away), etc. Personally I dont see what all the fuss is about. :)

        If a NEO's close to the Earth then it's clearly within our solar system. And if this NEO's within the system then how can it destroy the system from without?

        Man, I'm getting confused here waiting for this Revolutions trailer to download. My astronomy and sci-fi is becoming confusd - there must be a glitch in the system messing with my synaptic pathways. Yeah, that's it. That or I'm getting damn desperate waiting for the third movie to come out.

        (Oh, and remember, it's Thursday and it's The Matrix so it's OK not to hate the MPAA in this instance. The Slashdot Geek FAQ says so.)

      • Re:Back in the time of Star Control 2 it was simpl (Score:4, Informative)

        by Gumshoe ( 191490 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @06:38AM (#6753119) Journal
        Stars usually have two names, actually.


        Sometimes three. The very brightest stars get given a proper name and are either Greek, Roman or even Arabic in origin. Naturally, very, very few stars get given a proper name.

        The letter-number system you're talking about is the Bayer System (named after German astronomer, Johann Bayer) and works much as you described. To continue your example, Betelgeuse has the Bayer designation, Alpha Orionis (being the brightest star in the constellation Orion).

        The other main system is known as Flamsteed Numbering (named for English Astronomer, John Flamsteed) and works by listing the stars in each constellation by order of right ascension. Betelgeuse is therefore also known as 58 Orionis.

        There are other numbering systems but they are only used for non-naked-eye-visible stars.
      • Looking at my Tirion sky atlas:

        Betelgeuse is Orion Alpha

        And, incidentally, Rigel is Orion Beta
      • Beatleguise
        Is that what happens when Paul McCartney wears a mask?

  • this might be a long war (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cyberwave ( 695555 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @02:30AM (#6752440)
    Since in Chemistry the number of protons makes an easy periodic table, that wasn't much of a problem, but with Astronomy one has to consider orbit, mass, content, distance, etc., meaning there is probably a lot more to argue about, and no easily agreeable solution like the periodic table.

    • Since in Chemistry the number of protons makes an easy periodic table, that wasn't much of a problem,

      Since when did the names of the all elements have any relation to the number of protons they contain?
    • It's not the elements that are the problem, it's the compounds..

      There *IS* an official nomenclature, but it's unwieldy..

      A very simple example: xylene, p-methyltolulene, and o,p-dimethylbenzene are all the same thing.
      You could call water "oxane" if you like.

      And then there are things like steroisomers which make it all even more complicated.

      Of course, unlike astronomers, we can work around
      the problem by just drawing the structure instead. :-)

  • Geek Talk (Score:3, Funny)

    by Catharz ( 223736 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @02:31AM (#6752447)
    Damn, I thought I was good at killing conversation with geek talk. Remind me never to invite an astronomer to a party.
  • with earth it will surely be "MS Asteroid XP" - XPerience the Impact....

  • Uranus (Score:4, Funny)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @02:38AM (#6752469) Journal
    Maybe they'll come up with something else as entertaining.

    From the grandfather of the Roman Gods to the butt (pun intended) of most astronomy jokes. How the mighty have fallen.

  • black holes? (Score:1, Funny)

    by kgbspy ( 696931 )
    If only they'd implemented this before Uranus was named...

  • Did you know that (according to Bill Bryson) the person that discovered Uranus wanted to call it George?
    • I've heard stories about people naming their testicles, but I've never heard one about someone naming Uranus.

      *rim-shot*

      Thank you, tip your waitress.
      • Yeah it was to be named 'Georgium Sidus', "King George's Star", in honor of the English King at the time. And I think discover of Neptune (a Frenchman) wanted to name that planet 'Levellier' or some nonsense.

    • Re:Uranus (Score:4, Informative)

      by Jeremy Erwin ( 2054 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @09:16AM (#6754225) Journal
      According to my copy of A system of Natural Philosophy (JL Comstock, M.D, 1839), the planet is named Herschel.

      792. In consequence of some inequalities in the motions of Jupiter and Saturn, in their orbits, several astronomers had suspected that there existed another planet beyond the orbit of Saturn, by whose attractive influence these irregularities were produced. The conjecture was confirmed by Dr. Herschel, in 1781, who in that year discovered the planet, which is now generally known by the name of its discoverer, though called by him, Georgium sidus The orbit of Herschel is beyond that of Saturn, and at the distance of 1800 millions of miles from the sun. To the naked eye, this planet appears like a star of the sixth magnitude, being, with the exception of some of the comets, the most remote body so far as is known, in the solar system.

  • Obvious (Score:2, Funny)

    by phthisic ( 684413 )
    It's quite obvious that everything should be called Marclar.

  • Corporate Sell Out (Score:3, Funny)

    by H8X55 ( 650339 ) <jason.r.thomasNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday August 21, 2003 @03:34AM (#6752622) Homepage Journal
    Why not just auction the rights to name the crap off to the highest bidders? Just like our sports arenas. Why not have the IBM moon? How about the McDonalds Asteroid belt? Planet Coca Cola? CapitalOne "No Asshole" Uranus?
  • Oh boy... here we go with another group of things named after Dr. Seuss characters.

    If you travelled to Planet Grox, would your space craft be called The Grox Box?

  • What about STs? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21, 2003 @03:43AM (#6752654)
    ST = Space Thingies.

    Perhaps differentiated into:

    TSTs = Tiny space thingies.
    STSs = Small space thingies.
    MSTs = Medium space thingies.
    BSTs = Big space thingies.
    RBSTs = Really big space thingies.
    RRBSTs = Really, really big space thingies.
    RRBAQESTs = Really, really big, actually quite enormous, space thingies.
    • ...begins with:

      MST = Medium Space Thingies (formerly known as tiny, but that wasn't good for marketing),

      and then continues with:

      BST = Big Space Thingies.
      XBST = Extra Big Space Thingies.
      KSST = King Size Space Thingies (always written with small crowns replacing the dots over the i:s).
      SSKS = SuperSized King Size Space Thingies (ditto, but has to be written in a larger, blinking red text).

      Then, of course, there are the Kids' Space Thingies, which are quite small and come with plastic Disney figures.
  • Let me end this discussion right now.

    $ sqlplus name/pwd@db SQL*Plus: Release 9.2.0.1.0 - Production on Thu Aug 21 10:46:12 2003 Copyright (c) 1982, 2002, Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved. Connected to: Oracle9i Enterprise Edition Release 9.2.0.3.0 - Production With the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, OLAP and Oracle Data Mining options JServer Release 9.2.0.3.0 - Production SQL> create sequence spacerocks_seq; Sequence created. SQL>

    Aaaaaaaaaaaah that's better.

  • Let ICANN do it (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21, 2003 @04:00AM (#6752707)
    Actually, the best way to solve this problem would be to set up an intergalactic version of ICANN, seeing as how they've done so well with handling domain names...

  • What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tenebrious1 ( 530949 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @04:04AM (#6752718) Homepage
    Yeah, labelling them will give you a vague idea where in the solar system it is. But if you want to be specific, then you're still going to have to look it up to find out exactly which object you're talking about out of the thousands or millions of objects which could be in the same general area.

    It's like zip codes. 90001 is a zip code somewhere. I *think* the 9xxxx numbers are out on the west coast. If I *really* need to know where 90001 is, I'll look it up.

    Astronomers aren't going to remember every detail of every piece of rock floating between Saturn and Uranus, they're going to have to look it up anyway. Search engines are pretty powerful these days, so what difference will it make what they name the object as long as you can search by criteria?

    • Re:What's the point? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > what difference will it make what they name the object as long as you can search by criteria?

      The Media would HATE this.

      Asteroid ASD21904YH Might Hit Earth in 2880

      ..just doesn't sound as cool as:

      'TerraBlaster' Asteroid Might Hit Earth in 2880

  • Simple solution: Use namespaces. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by will_die ( 586523 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @06:02AM (#6753013) Homepage
    That way they can keep reusing the same name and also provide more information on its location.

    So now something like the earth would be refered to as 'milkyway.sol.earth' the earth's moon is 'milkyway.sol.earth.moon'.
  • posted like, two weeks ago?

  • I know, use IP6 addresses (Score:3, Funny)

    by greenink ( 700288 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @08:19AM (#6753763)
    I am sure there are a few IP6 addresses that could be assigned! I heard a rumour there was enough address space to label everything in the Universe. You can even end up with a hierarchical model. It would be very useful for routing those inter-Galaxy emails. Not as daft as it sounds.

  • Let me guess, Philosophical Language? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jea6 ( 117959 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @08:31AM (#6753855)
    I hope they use Philosophical Language because the last time this was tried, Waterhouse helped Wilkins come up with Real Character [baroquecycle.com].

  • Scientific naming conventions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xipho ( 193257 ) on Thursday August 21, 2003 @08:56AM (#6754064)
    Would have thought astronomers would have had a naming convention already, its a pretty "old" science. Perhaps they will adopt something like that used in biological sciences, wherein there are a number of different "codes" [1] [iczn.org] [2] [bgbm.org] [3] [www.dsmz.de] by which organisms are named. These codes are currently being challenged by a new system [ohiou.edu] that has many up in arms...

  • Couldn't help it (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Alkonaut ( 604183 )
    (Professor Farnsworth has just invented the Smelloscope.)

    Farnsworth: You'll find that every heavenly body has its own particular scent.
    Fry: As long as you don't make me smell 'Uranus'! Ha! Ha!
    Farnsworth: I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed 'Uranus' in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.
    Fry: Oh. What's it called now?
    Farnsworth: Urectum.

  • There is remarkably little contention in the actual scientific community about nomenclature. A few astronomers argue strongly for organized nomenclature revamps, however the vast majority of astronomers are not in this camp. The objects themselves don't fundamentally change based on the name we attach to this; most of the clamoring for nomenclature changes come from the lay press and the amateur astronomy community.

    That being said, it's important to realize that the proposed classification system only a

  • involved or we might end up with Hungarian Astronomical Notation.

  • Pluto (Score:2)

    by jhines ( 82154 )
    Having Pluto leading the knupiter band of objects, sounds fine, if a bit Disneyifed, to me.

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