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Mars Space

Martian Naming Madness 193

Posted by Zonk from the own-a-piece-of-spongebob-today dept.
Macblaster writes "With the rise of robotic exploration of Mars, scientists are having difficulty naming all the new features they're discovering. Accepted name lists have fallen by the wayside, and now scientifically important features are named after everything from 80's bands to romantic interests." From the article: "Like European explorers who named the New World after their homes in the Old, the Mars scientists have filled the strange landscape of the Red Planet with a mishmash of modern life on Earth. The twin rover missions have forced scientists to come up with more than 4,000 names to mark everything from the majestic Columbia Hills to a few pebbles in the sand. The result is an extravagantly labeled map punctuated by the scientists' ever-changing preoccupations with history, holidays, monkeys, ice cream, cartoon characters, sushi, Mayan words, Scandinavian fish delicacies ... the list goes on and on."
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Martian Naming Madness More

Martian Naming Madness

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  • To name rocks, I mean? Ones that are smaller than, say, a city block?

    Are people just bored or what?
    • How long before someone is selling the rights to name a rock on ebay? NASA could probably raise the money for a mars mission within a year if they did that!
      • Heh. Hell, I should do it myself. Judging by the amazing frequency with which one hears those stupid ads on the radio for "naming a star" (to be "recorded in book form in the US copyright office" -- whoopie), I might make a bundle.

        1. Put out cheap ads for naming Mars rocks
        2. Wait for money to pour in
        3. Print them out, sending a copy to no one in particular, care of said copyright office
        4. Profit!

        No question marks there...
        • I've always thought it'd be a good thing to stick in a science fiction book. You know, going to a planet orbiting a star named "John Beckmeyer," and having the hero wonder how it got its name. Now, you can do the same thing in a book about Mars, just by using some of the odder names already in use.
      • It's added to my "list of things to sell". If the other person who replied doesn't do it first and make the news, that is.

        Thanks for the idea, I'll give you 10% if I get incredibly rich from the sale.
        • ...if I get incredibly rich from the sale.

          Just out of curiosity, how rich do you have to be in order to be "incredibly rich?" Would you find it incredible if you were as rich as J.P. Morgan, or Henry Ford, or would you still find it credible if you were as rich as Bill Gates? Enquiring minds want to know!

          • Just out of curiosity, how rich do you have to be in order to be "incredibly rich?"

            Rich enough that you get bored with snorting cocaine through thousand dollar bills off the breasts of three call girls who are lying parallel on the bed in your personal zeppelin, which is floating far above a battlefield where armed men fight and die for your personal amusement.
    • Not to mention that since Mars is close enough to be colonized relatively soon, perhaps the first settlers should be the ones to name the locations where they set up their colonies. I know I sure wouldn't want to be living somewhere called "SpongeBob!"
      • perhaps the first settlers should be the ones to name the locations where they set up their colonies.
        And I'm sure they would. Anybody can name anything they want, that doesn't mean those names will ever enter into common usage. In the long run most of these names will probably just be ignored and replaced with others.
      • Baron Yam
        12 Spongebob
        Pineapple, Under The Sea
        MARS

        It'd be a fun address for a while, but I bet it would wear quickly. Also, a hundred years later when Mars is dotted with little settlements all looking to grab that tourist dollar... you'd have to live with 23rd century poorly researched Spongebob themed decorations all over town!

        Just try visiting Vulcan, which has a large USS Enterprise model and encourages its citizens to wear pointy ears.
      • It's not really that big a problem. Just because it's named one thing doesn't mean it can't be changed. Just ask the people of St. Petersburg^W Petrograd^W Leningrad^W St. Petersburg, they've been through four names in the last hundred years (and only to get back where they started too). It's no big deal, names can be set now, and changed later, and if not, hey, it'll be funny to mock people living in "Spongebob!".
    • Some of them, yes. If NASA discovers an intact meteor (remember the moon doesn't have an atmosphere) on the surface, then I'd say it merit a name (though the chances of discovering something like this via land rovers is highly unlikely.)

      Some rocks may merit a name simply because of its unique shape or aspects. A smooth shaped rock implies the presence of water. A triangle shaped rock could be the remains of the top of a martian house but the rover simply cannot dig deep enough to confirm. The list goes on.

    • The whole idea of naming Martian items is because they have scientific importance, or are geographically important. The rovers probably look very closely at some items, so it's convenient to name even tiny items rather than just saying "that rock/plateau/hill over there".
    • To name rocks, I mean? Ones that are smaller than, say, a city block?

      I'm sure we won't be the first culture to 'discover' an area and start out with many small and localized names and eventually end up with a few that are still with us. And people throughout history have been naming ares smaller than what we consider a city block. (Like say, some hypothetical area in colonial england called "The Old Farm")

      Likely, most of these names will become temporary scientific community jargon, and eventually
    • Kind of like making Pluto a planet.
    • I'd use an even stronger word than "necessary" -- I'd say it's vital. Our software lets us associate short, convenient nicknames with targets picked out from imagery, and these nicknames facilitate precise communication within the team. It's better to give a thousand rocks silly nicknames such as "Abba" than to miss a single crucial observation because two people had different ideas about which rock "the flattish rock off to the left over there" was.

      We also name particular spots on rocks (or soil) for t

  • Looks like they will have to greatly extend : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_naming_c onventions [wikipedia.org]

    But seriously, how likely are these to be used (retained for use) anyway ? Or haven't you heard of a planet named George ? http://encarta.msn.com/related_761564250_14/planet _originally_named_in_honor_of_George_III.html [msn.com]

  • I understand that it's a tough task to come out with thousands of names, but it should be clear that it's a serious thing, and we can't screw a planet toponomasthic just because we are quite far from it.
    A mix of fun and seriousness is due.
    At least they shouldn't use names that are just a evident current trend.

  • 80s Bands? (Score:5, Funny)

    by serutan ( 259622 ) <snoopdougNO@SPAMgeekazon.com> on Sunday September 25, 2005 @03:45AM (#13643216) Homepage
    Actually the article says 70s bands. But it would rule to have Martian features named Oingo Boingo, Wall of Voodoo, Bananarama and Dire Straits.

    • Re:80s Bands? (Score:5, Funny)

      by lxs ( 131946 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @04:38AM (#13643344)
      Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?

      Especially the children of future colonists that will live in the Bon Jovi crater.

      At least they can make fun of the kids from Milli Vanilli valley.

      • Re:80s Bands? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by codepanda ( 896663 )
        Assuming the names did stick, the future inhabitants would probably have no clue who Bon Jovi is... much less that the name has significance outside the context of the crater they live in... they probably wouldn't know if its namesake is a who, a what, or a where... try asking the average 12 year old if he's familiar with the Rat Pack, I dare say his answer won't even remotely involve Frank Sinatra

  • Oh please, no. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Alioth ( 221270 ) <no@spam> on Sunday September 25, 2005 @03:46AM (#13643220) Journal
    Scandanavian fish delicacies? Ye gods!
    Oh someone please don't tell me they've named a hill or rock or crater "Lutefisk"! Please, no!

  • Obvious suggestion won't work (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @03:50AM (#13643226)

    Unfortunately, people have to be dead for three years before you can use their name, so CowboyNeal Crater is right out.

  • And I say, so what? (Score:3, Informative)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @03:51AM (#13643231) Journal
    The main features have for the most part, followed the convention. But mostly, we are talking about naming a soil type or small boulders that here on earth would have no special name (unless something significant happened on them). These names simply allow the scientists to call something somewhat more descriptive than say "rock145".
    • Even naming hills, rocks and so on with arbitrary letter combinations will work. In WWII, many hills, ridges and features were known by their map coordinates, or in some cases by their elevation. As long as it's clear and unambiguous, it doesn't really matter what you use.

  • They should hold a contest (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MichaelSmith ( 789609 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @03:55AM (#13643244) Homepage Journal

    ....on the web page [nasa.gov] and collect a big list of proposed names. Filter out dupes and obsene references and then build an online queue of names.

    You could almost automate the process. Optical software on the rover identifies rocks (that's what it is for). Ground based software associates identifiers with submitted names.

  • I kind of have to wonder (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Given how prone to these huge sandstorms Mars is, how many of these named features will still even exist in six months, or six years?

  • Cultural Phenom (Score:5, Interesting)

    by putko ( 753330 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @04:03AM (#13643263) Homepage Journal
    Names are a cultural phenomenon. People feel very strongly about names. E.g. some countries have lists of names, you must name your kid from the list (unless you are a foreigner -- then they usually let you off the hook).

    Whites in American tend to have a set of names (large) that they pick from. They tend not to pick names at random (which is what this article is about). But poor whites will choose non-standard spellings for normal names.

    Try to see what your own attitudes are to names, with this simple test:

    There are some black NFL players with non-standard names. Here are 10 unique ones:

    Laveranues
    Na'il
    Jerametrius
    J'Vonne
    Kenyatta
    Dontarrious
    Plaxico
    LaDainian
    Shirdonya
    Keyaron

    If you read that list of names and felt like laughing, you are probably not black, and you are probably offended that rocks on Mars are getting silly names.

    On the other hand, if you don't care about those names and how non-standard they are, I bet you don't care what the rocks on Mars get called either.

    • Kenyatta (Score:4, Informative)

      by jdfox ( 74524 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @05:19AM (#13643414)
      Actually, one name on your list isn't confected or random: Kenyatta.

      Jomo Kenyatta [wikipedia.org] was the first leader of the modern state of Kenya, and is a hero to many, especially among African-Americans.

      So naming a kid "Kenyatta" is a little like naming him "Jefferson" or "Franklin".

      • I specifically used the expression "non-standard names", because I didn't mean to imply that all of them are just made up based on how cool they sound.

        A black parent naming their kid "Nat Turner" is choosing a non-standard name (but one with great "kill whitey" implications). A parent who picks that name just doesn't value conformity for conformity's sake. The same parent who chooses to name their kid "Kenyatta" probably wouldn't mind if some rocks get named "hello Kitty", as long as a fair share of other
        • You need to be a bit clearer about your terms here. There are scientific standards for naming various things (taxonomy, astronomy, etc.), and the article referrs to a standard proposed by the International Astronomical Union, which according to the article isn't coping with the large numbers of things now being named.

          But I'm not aware of any "standards" for naming kids. What's a standard name? Is "Rush" a standard name?

          Some dippy Congresswoman is calling for more "African-American names", when there's no s
          • Clearly there is no standard for names in America. You can't enumerate them. It is my understanding that in Denmark, there is a list of allowed names -- clearly there they have a a standard. Because we don't have standard list of names, it is quite arbitrary to decide if a name is "standard". To complicate matters, some names are common for pets, but not people (e.g. "Spot", "Fido", "Max").

            I think most people go by the rule, "have I ever heard or read this name multiple times before?"

            So "Rush", for in
            • To complicate matters, some names are common for pets, but not people (e.g. "Spot", "Fido", "Max").

              That's funny. I know two boys born within the past six months who are named "Max." Not short for Maximillian or anything, just "Max." In a pretty well-to-do town, too.

              Haven't met anyone named Fido, though. :)

    • Re:Cultural Phenom (Score:2, Insightful)

      by eggegg ( 754560 )
      If you read that list of names and felt like laughing, you are probably not black, and you are probably offended that rocks on Mars are getting silly names. On the other hand, if you don't care about those names and how non-standard they are, I bet you don't care what the rocks on Mars get called either.

      Not really -- there aren't many NFL players (black or otherwise) named "Sashimi", "SpongeBob SquarePants", or "Be My Valentine". Names such as those you mentioned, while unfamiliar and foreign to the (wh
    • Unfortunately for Plaxico Burress (a wide receiver now with the New York Giants), he's often hurt and hurt for a while, which has earned him the unfortunate moniker of "Plexiglass" Burress.
    • In France, or so I'm told, you can name a child after a saint, a person in The Bible, or a historic personage from over 1,000 years ago. Nothing else. If you try, the name is rejected and you must pick an acceptable name. No exceptions for foreigners. I've heard of clerks simply changing an unacceptable name without telling the proud parents, but I don't know if that's true.
  • Anything named after The Doors or even Jim Morrison?

  • Your Finger You Fool (Score:5, Funny)

    by cranos ( 592602 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @04:28AM (#13643321) Homepage Journal
    See this is what happens when you don't have a handy native to pull over and ask what the landmark is called. For those who don't know here's a quote from Terry Pratchetts "Light Fantastic"

    The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called -- in the local language -- Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund.

    The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.
    • When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.

      This always reminds me of the origins of "Canad

  • How about being a bit original? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ZeroExistenZ ( 721849 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @04:41AM (#13643352)

    Yea, I know it's hard to come up with 4000 names, but look at this picture [nasa.gov].
    It almost looks like some highschool kid didn't know his geography and just made up names to be funny...

    What about these mystical sounding names, which require (mostly Latin) study to actually 'get'?
    These names seem more like graffiti or like a dog marking each corner for his new territory.

    • Those are the columbia hills, named after the astronauts who died when the shuttle exploded.

    • Re:How about being a bit original? (Score:5, Informative)

      by B747SP ( 179471 ) <slashdot@selfabusedelephant.com> on Sunday September 25, 2005 @05:41AM (#13643444)
      It almost looks like some highschool kid didn't know his geography and just made up names to be funny...

      I'm not even American, and I take grave offence at your comments. Kalpana Chawla, Rick Husband, William McCool and their colleagues were astronauts who were killed when Columbia burned and broke up on re-entry (You know, Columbia, the space shuttle).

      Whilst naming after not-very-dead-yet people seems to be in conflict with international protocol, I can't think of too many more appropriate names for a group of significant landmarks. Those folks died exploring, doing *exactly* what the Mars missions are about. I'm pleased and proud to hear that significant landmarks on Mars have been named after them.

  • Who says everything needs a name?

  • Naming conventions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by syousef ( 465911 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @04:56AM (#13643380) Journal
    There is not unprecedented. There are around 6000 naked eye stars (total for both hemispheres under good seeing conditions with no light polution). No problems with naming the major ones and giving the others designations by constellation or according to one of many catalogues. (Only insanity here is there's a huge overlap between catalogs so one star can have many names).

    There is incredible diversity in the number of species on Earth and again that's been no problem for science. (Okay the Latin is archaic now but it had its merits when the system was conceived).

    The problem is that scientists are forgetting to be scientific and use their basic scientific tools - classification being one of the most powerful. Trouble is no scientist or NASA spokesperson wants to tell the public about his exciting discovery on rock NW2345, when it could be called Van Halen or some other name that would capture public imagination.

    This is similar to the problems caused by coders who name their variables inane things from swearwords to girls names that have nothing to do with their purpose.
    • There is incredible diversity in the number of species on Earth and again that's been no problem for science.

      Nope, no problems. But plenty of weirdness [earthlink.net], one example: "Agathidium bushi, A. cheneyi and A. rumsfeldi Miller and Wheeler, 2005 (slime mold beetles) Named after the U.S. president, vice president, and defense secretary." I think there was even a case of two taxonomists naming species in a way to ridicule each other, although I couldn't find it mentioned on the site.
    • (Only insanity here is there's a huge overlap between catalogs so one star can have many names)

      If you look at a star chart, you'll see that where Andromeda and Pegasus come together, there's a star that can logically be considered as being in either one of them. It has two constellation names, one for each. (It's one of the corners of the Great Quadralateral.

    • Trouble is no scientist or NASA spokesperson wants to tell the public about his exciting discovery on rock NW2345, when it could be called Van Halen or some other name that would capture public imagination.

      Why not name it after something is discovered on it? You might even be able to give it a more meaningful name this way.

    • Generally speaking, if something gets a name like NW2345, it will also at some point acquire an actual name that people can call it. You can't call something hill NW3464 in casual conversation... there just isn't enough redundant transmission to be clear that you don't mean hill NW3646 or NWT464 or NW3474. But if you say that you're sending the rover to lutefish hill, everybody knows where you are going.

      Why not have all of the planets in the solar system named sol-1, sol-2, sol-3, etc? Why not number peo

  • Encroaching on IP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FlynnMP3 ( 33498 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @05:03AM (#13643392)
    If this isn't a karma whoring subject, then I don't know what is. *smile*

    A rock up there is named Spongebob Squarepants, with a feature on the rock named Patrick (Squarepants' friend & sidekick). I am sure the name is unofficial, well I hope it is anyway. With names taken from popular culture, somebody somewhere is going to get their panties in a bunch over it. What happens if a region starts getting names from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series? I mean, it was last year I think that the word 'moogle' was entered Dictionaries. That's pretty mainstream. Personally, I think that is a travesty.

    Point being, if J. Rowlings takes offense at her names of characters and world in her books are starting to be used for features on Mars, then she might want some kind of compensation for them, maybe only a paraphysical presence in a future mars mission. But what if it comes later? Like all this IP submarining crap that is all the rage is legal and corporate circles these days.

    Some dead tired scientist names a obvious shaped rock 'Big Mac'. McDonald's finds out about it 3 years later and wants a clause written in some contract somewhere that everytime a name is used from their menu, NASA has to pay royalties or some such. Or worse yet, could NASA be cohersed into commercial or corporate interests in a different way than they already are?

    It's 5 o'clock in the AM where I am typing this message at and my brain is starting to hurt. I hate the fact that any resonably intelligent person now automatically starts thinking of how IP can be used in a negative light. However you want to characterise that.

    -FlynnMP3

  • Easy Solution (Score:3, Funny)

    by acd294 ( 685183 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @05:08AM (#13643401) Homepage
    Just give them all ipv6 addresses.
    • Yeah and then in 100 years we'll have a bunch of people screaming the sky is falling because our new space probes are discovering these new places and OH MY GOODNESS we won't have enough space for them all.

  • Auction some names off. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Guano_Jim ( 157555 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @05:24AM (#13643421)
    They should auction off naming rights for a few objects to the general public.

    Put the funds towards an engineering scholarship for some kid who wants to work on the next mission.

  • Names, like history, are the story of the victor.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Butt ( 93557 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @06:51AM (#13643615) Homepage
    ...and they don't last forever. In Australia and New Zealand, for example, names that were in place for hundreds (NZ) or thousands (Aust) years were ignored by the British settlers when naming them in the 18th/19th century. Slowly, more of them - particularly significant ones like mountains - are becoming known by their original names.

    A lot of people view this as being PC, but I think a bigger issue is that the names actually had meaning for the original inhabitants and the stories of these names were recorded in song, visual arts, histories, etc. which gives them an ongoing reason to have the names. On the other hand, if you just give something a name because it's different than anything else, at some stage someone will have to make a name meaningful, and they'll do it without reference to the original. (When China settles Mars, for example, I'm sure they won't keep the English names).
  • Because there appear to be an infinite number of them, and what could be better than putting building your new Martian greenhouse on the south face of "Hoary Hedgehog Hill"?
  • The article mentions ABBA, the Bee Gees and Engelbert Humperdinck. These are not 80s bands. "Macblaster" and the alleged editor Zonk need to listen to something other than their Fisher-Price My First iPod and get a clue.

    80s band names would be cool. Baby Boomer twaddle is not.

  • Most of these names are purely for short-term convenience and are unlikely ever to be used beyond the handful of scientists who work on the data in years to come.

    That some small rock has a name is irrelevent.

    The name doesn't even have to be unique - so long as it's unique to a particular mission - which is just as well because if you took all of the words in all of the languages of the world, you couldn't name any significant fraction of the Martian landscape down to the level of detail that they are.

    Big th

  • Ob. Quote (Score:4, Funny)

    by earthbound kid ( 859282 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @08:53AM (#13643981) Homepage
    "When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that name
    everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere... the Microsoft Galaxy... Planet Starbucks. ..."

    (And when the story is duped, I'll get to post, "Everything is just a copy of copy..." Whee!)
  • ..that they didn't call any area on Mars, "Lutefisk Beach"
  • I remember when networking was just becoming widespread, and people had to start naming their machines. The net admin in our organization was a ski freak and had the bright idea of naming ours after his favorite skiing resorts. So, we had to remember the spelling of things like Banff, Chamonix, Zermatt, etc. Fortunately he got another job and we got the new guy to name them sensibly, after muppets. I had Gonzo.

    Why do I suddenly feel like Grandpa Simpson? "We called it 'walking bird' back then ..."
    • For a while, I was doing tech support at an ISP where the naming convention was countries. As you could see the names of the mail serves in the headers, people started to think that the names meant that the servers were actually in those countries. I can't count how many times I had to explain to lusers that we didn't really have servers in France Spain or Germany.

  • Recommend a mnemonic utility for travelers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mattr ( 78516 ) <<mattr> <at> <telebody.com>> on Sunday September 25, 2005 @09:26AM (#13644133) Homepage Journal
    I can understand wanting to name significant places but naming pebbles has always been a bit much to me, more of a PR vehicle and maybe a bit of geek fun at JPL. Perhaps there is a bit of cultural imperialism too? Grid coordinates are fine for scientific observations.

    Anyway, as soon as people live there they will probably use their own names (hopefully most of the planet will be as yet unnamed).

    What I would like to suggest is that some time be put into creating a mnemonic system that would be of use to travelers or anybody else who needs to navigate the surface. Or for that matter, to allow people to talk about locations on the planet without having to contact an online database every time someone mentions a new geographical name.

    There are lots of ways it could be done. For example if you pick a sequence of one or two syllable sounds to indicate moving east from 0 degrees longitude, and a similar encoding for latitude, you could easily create a name for a place that sounds and means something.

    Or by tacking one such standardized sequence to the end of an existing name perhaps with the first syllable indicating compass direction (say for a route a robot takes) you could specify by name points along the route. A given sequence would have a given resolution (say 10 meters for tiny robots).

    And you could have alternate homonyms for each syllable so that it is easy to say a given sequence in some language (really the sequence should be chosen so that it is easy to say in all major languages).

    Also the same naming system could be used for ANY planet or for that matter, any mountain or terrestrial orienteering / geographical application. This way you could in fact practice and use a system on Earth that will serve you in good stead on Mars.

    If a similar system was developed based not on geographical coordinates but to measure for instance time, temperature, depth, or even spacecraft motion or orbits, it could tie in to the above system and provide an extremely useful way to talk about land, water, and space phenomena in a unified fashion, with arbitrary precision and universal applicability, while being culture agnostic, and in particular human-centered. Using computers for so many things we tend to get stuck with too much information and make silly mistakes like whether to use Fahrenheit or Celsius. These things can kill you in space or for that matter in the ocean depths. By saying human-centered, I mean that a human can always be able to talk about a location if he or she knows such a universal naming system, and it uses the brain more efficiently. We have trouble remembering numerical strings but can relatively easily remember poetry, songs, famous quotations, where we put things in our homes, routes to get to the office, and so on.

    I believe it would be a good idea to develop such a system to be eventually taught to every school child, possibly with a limited set of nouns and verbs culled from different languages, so that every person in the world can talk rationally to each other about the basics of location, time, motion, route, and so on. It also could give rise to a basic way for any person in the world to add to a universally useable database of local travel directions or a minimal language that can be used by both humans and computers.

    This system would limit the unnecessary, frivolous naming being done and would allow random locations to be specified in terms of their context (from a well-known named landmark), so every major Mars landmark should have a single precise point at which it is based so that you could indicate a route from there.

    You could build mnemonic strings in your head to remember a certain location, and you can build songs that help you get there. Children and adults can share in talking about features of Mars, and humans can intuitively check the coordinates used by computers as well as using speech input and sound output to talk about coordinates.

    I'm probably not the first to think of this sort of
  • ...some sociologist studying the History of Science will be writing an overly long and heavily footnoted analysis of what the distribution of names used indicates about the culture of NASA at the time.

  • .... The Reds name YOU!!!
  • This is the way things have already been named.

    The Grand Tetons, were they to be found on Mars in this day, would be called The Big Tits.

    --
    BMO
  • My Geology professors had an interesting solution when they went to Antartica in the late 1970's and had to name all sorts of newly discovered features, some got named after themselves. If you don't believe me here it is.

    Mount Ojakangas:
    http://aadc-maps.aad.gov.au/aadc/gaz/display_name. cfm?gaz_id=129623 [aad.gov.au]

    Matsch Ridge:
    http://aadc-maps.aad.gov.au/aadc/gaz/display_name. cfm?gaz_id=128547 [aad.gov.au]
  • Hey, as long as they don't use "Goatse crater" we should be ok.

  • biologists have been doing this for years (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The_Rook ( 136658 ) on Sunday September 25, 2005 @05:08PM (#13646644)
    in biology, when someone discovers a new species, that person gets the right to name it. while most biologists will name new species after their mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, girlfiends, etc. some have been a bit more - creative.

    some examples:
    Eurygenius (pedilid beetle)
    Ochisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
    Dolichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
    Florichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
    Marichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
    Nanichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
    Peggichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
    Polychisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera) Kirkaldy was criticized for frivolity by the London Zoological Society in 1912.
    Pieza deresistans Evenhuis, 2002 (mythicomyiid fly)
    Lalapa lusa (tiphiid wasp)
    Agra vation, Agra phobia (carabid beetles)

    apparently, as long as the name can be made to sound vaguely greek or latin, it's acceptable. for more names try

    http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/taxonomy/taxPuns .html [earthlink.net]

    or

    http://home.earthlink.net/~johnepler/names.html [earthlink.net]

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