Inside Bearleft.net
Best Of BearLeft.net
A Cry Heard Round The World: Kim Sun-Il died desperate and alone, but he did not die unheard.
Looking At And Longing For Mars: Reflections on a childhood dream.
A Robot May Not Harm a Human Being. Is The Opposite True?: Thoughts on the future rights of artificial intelligence.
Long After The Boys Of Summer Have Gone: What makes a relationship work?
Winter Of Our Feline Discontent: What the cat wants, the cat gets. But what DOES it want?
To Tell The Truth: There may be no honor among thieves, but can't we find it even in a few good men and women?
Should The Human Brain Retire?: We know that we cannot win forever. We know that machines will continue to improve. So why don't we let the human brain retire gracefully now, with honors?
Translate This Page
Read Bear Left in:
Chinese
German
Japanese
Korean
French
Italian
Portuguese
Spanish
Translations powered by Alta Vista Babelfish
Privacy Policy
To learn how services incorporated into this blog may use personal information, click here.
Total entries in this blog:
Published: Sep 16, 2005 01:41 PM
Tue - March 16, 2004
Take Two Sedna And Call Me Tomorrow
Naming a planetoid is serious
business and anything but easy.
When
space scientists announced the discovery of the most distant known object in the
solar system on Monday—a frozen red planetoid 8 billion miles from
Earth—I thought this a remarkable achievement until I heard its name:
Sedna.
Then I simply felt confused.
Confused, that is, until I realized that Sedna was discovered and named by some of the same planetary scientists who gave us Quaoar (pronounced kwah-o-wahr), the solar system's second largest planetoid. These scientists apparently have an affinity for names that sound like prescription pain medications.
"Take two Quaoar and call me in the morning," a doctor might say. " If you still can't sleep, I may prescribe something stronger—like Sedna."
It's not that the scientists' hearts weren't in the right place when they named their discoveries. Greek and Latin names predominate in a solar system that could benefit from greater multiculturalism. Sedna is an Inuit goddess who created the sea creatures of the Arctic. Quaoar comes from the creation myth of Tongva indians. But if these cosmic tributes honor the mythologies of proud peoples, it's equally true that Sedna and Quaoar don't exactly roll off the uninitiated tongue—or pen.
Don't even get me started on the wag who named a planet Uranus.
Then I simply felt confused.
Confused, that is, until I realized that Sedna was discovered and named by some of the same planetary scientists who gave us Quaoar (pronounced kwah-o-wahr), the solar system's second largest planetoid. These scientists apparently have an affinity for names that sound like prescription pain medications.
"Take two Quaoar and call me in the morning," a doctor might say. " If you still can't sleep, I may prescribe something stronger—like Sedna."
It's not that the scientists' hearts weren't in the right place when they named their discoveries. Greek and Latin names predominate in a solar system that could benefit from greater multiculturalism. Sedna is an Inuit goddess who created the sea creatures of the Arctic. Quaoar comes from the creation myth of Tongva indians. But if these cosmic tributes honor the mythologies of proud peoples, it's equally true that Sedna and Quaoar don't exactly roll off the uninitiated tongue—or pen.
Don't even get me started on the wag who named a planet Uranus.