[HN Gopher] Second 'impossible' ring found around distant dwarf ...
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Second 'impossible' ring found around distant dwarf planet
Author : Hooke
Score : 83 points
Date : 2023-04-30 12:57 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| fvrghl wrote:
| Seems like they should rename it at this point.
| pacaro wrote:
| The naming conventions/protocols are fairly fixed at this point
| see [1], but this name absolutely fits the convention for this
| class of object
|
| Quoting Wikipedia:
|
| Other trans-Neptunian objects (such as 50000 Quaoar), including
| classical Kuiper belt objects, are given mythological or mythic
| names (not necessarily from Greek or Roman mythology),
| particularly those associated with creation.
|
| Quote ends
|
| From a physx article [2]
|
| Quote begins
|
| Consistent with the IAU conventions for naming non-resonant
| Kuiper Belt Objects after creator deities, the object was given
| the name Quaoar after the Tongva creator god. The Tongva people
| (otherwise known as the Mission Indians) are native to the area
| around Los Angeles, where the discovery of Quaoar was made.
|
| Quote ends
|
| I see no reason why names need to fit the sensibilities of
| English speakers
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_naming_convention...
|
| [2] https://phys.org/news/2015-08-dwarf-planet-quaoar.html
| George83728 wrote:
| I'd have preferred a name from classical roman/greek religion
| to keep the theme going, but Quaoar is still a mythical name so
| at least it partially fits the theme. But why should rings
| matter?
| cwkoss wrote:
| I'm glad they are getting away from roman/greek gods. Space
| should not be limited by eurocentrism.
| George83728 wrote:
| Other cultures already have other names for the planets,
| no? Roman pantheism is a long dead religion anyway.
| cwkoss wrote:
| NASA is not part of the roman/greek culture, but uses
| those names.
| George83728 wrote:
| I was referring to the implied "euro" culture which you
| brought up by saying these names are "eurocentric".
| Obviously NASA aren't Romans. What does NASA have to do
| with it anyway? Isn't it the National Observatory in
| Brazil that is primarily responsible for the observations
| of this planet? NASA doesn't own space.
| w0de0 wrote:
| No, other cultures do not have a name for an extrasolar
| planet just discovered.
|
| Moreover, the extant names from the Roman pantheon are
| universal within the international scientific community.
| They are also nearly exhausted.
|
| I find it tedious to reject names from other pantheons.
| Not least because they are exceptionally cool - Quaoar
| and `Oumuamua are stellar and divine names. Of all
| things, should not astronomy inspire us to grok human
| culture as a global and syncretic whole, as opposed to a
| parochial set of divisions in which English speakers may
| only use Greco-Roman gods?
| George83728 wrote:
| Whoa there, I don't reject the Quaoar name. I said it's
| fine, it fits the theme well enough. I only expressed a
| _preference_ that they stuck with roman /greek names. I
| don't think they're running out of those, I clicked a few
| at random on wikipedia's list and the ones I happened to
| click didn't have corresponding planets yet.
|
| They could have named it Terminus, or Fontus, or
| Quirinus, or Vejovis, or... But whatever.
| sophacles wrote:
| This isn't a planet though, why should it get a planet's
| name?
| input_sh wrote:
| Perseverance landed near crater Jezero, named after a
| _tiny_ municipality in Bosnia (~1100 population). It 's
| not the only Mars crater named after tiny towns around
| the world, but the fact that jezero means lake in many
| Slavic languages had a lot to do with this particular
| selection. There's also four valleys near the crater
| named after Bosnian rivers (Neretva, Sava, Pliva, Una).
|
| Anyways, the point I'm trying to make is that the space
| community is definitely thinking more globally nowadays
| and that it _absolutely works_. We went from no
| particular interest in astronomy amongst general
| population to meticulously following Perseverance 's
| every step.
| zuminator wrote:
| To your question, no not entirely anyway. Other cultures
| might have traditional names for the visible stars and
| planets, but the heavenly bodies that were discovered by
| telescope basically just have the names they were given
| by their discoverers.
|
| For example in Japanese, the visible planets have names
| that align with their own pre-Columbian traditions, e.g.
| Mars is named "Kasei" which means Firestar and Jupiter is
| named "Mokusei" which means Treestar. But when you get to
| planets discovered in modern times, Uranus, Neptune and
| demoted Pluto, they're respectively "Tennousei (Heavenly-
| King Star)", "Kaiousei (Sea-King Star)", and "Meiousei
| (Hades-King Star)", which are directly derived from the
| Western names given by their discoverers.
|
| Now imagine the thousands of smaller named bodies in the
| Solar System, nobody's going to be bothered to come up
| with independent names for all of them for every culture,
| it would be too confusing. Imagine if everyone used
| native-tongue keywords in programming languages. Someone
| would send you a Python progam in French and it would be
| littered with _sinon_ , _sauf_ , _Vrai_ , etc. While it
| might be convenient for the native speaker working alone,
| it would be a nightmare for interoperability.
|
| Thus, newly discovered heavently bodies are referred to
| by the designations approved by the International
| Astronomical Union, in this case via its Working Group -
| Small Bodies Nomenclature.
| pavon wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they have all been used by this point.
| Expanding to other cultures is the best way to keep with the
| theme.
| input_sh wrote:
| > to keep the theme going
|
| It is consistent, planets are from Roman or Greek, dwarf
| planets are roughly gods of creation regardless of mythology.
|
| Other dwarf planets include Sedna (Inuit), Haumea (Hawaii),
| Makemake (Easter Islands), Gonggong (China), Orcus (Etruscan,
| but also Roman).
|
| Though Pluto and Eris are intentional exceptions because they
| were thought to be planets for a long time.
| George83728 wrote:
| Makes sense, thanks. If they're sticking to a pattern, then
| I'm satisfied.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| The moons of Uranus are William Shakespeare and Alexander
| Pope characters.
| p1esk wrote:
| I'm not saying it was aliens. But it was aliens.
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| Not sure if you wanted a laugh. But you got a laugh out of me.
| sdfghswe wrote:
| I hate it when publications label scientific discoveries
| "impossible". It makes scientists look like idiots.
|
| OBVIOUSLY scientists understand that if something has been
| experimentally verified then it's by definition not impossible
| and the theory has to be improved. But I wonder if the general
| public understands that scientists understand that. Or if they
| imagine scientists going "Sir, an animal big as a house with a
| tail on his face? Impossible!"
| giantrobot wrote:
| > But I wonder if the general public understands that
| scientists understand that.
|
| No, the general public does not. The scientific literacy of the
| general public is abysmal. There's entire political movements
| predicated on a lack of understanding of the term "scientific
| theory".
| taejavu wrote:
| ...that's why it's in quotes.
| sdfghswe wrote:
| Why use quotes with ambiguous words when you can just use
| unambiguous words? Small vocabulary or what?
|
| If you use impossible in quotes to mean something that's NOT
| impossible but surprising or unexpected, why not just say
| that?
| tabtab wrote:
| Too bad the New Horizons probe can't make an L-turn to go visit
| one of these.
| shmerl wrote:
| Astronomy article should use kilometers, not miles.
| bsaul wrote:
| Any science-related piece of text should use international
| standard units, period.
|
| I really find it absurdly arrogant from american writers to use
| their broken system for scientific material, knowing the rest
| of the whole god damn world is already forced to use english
| for scientific communication.
|
| As a non-native person reading and writing english all day
| long, this makes me infuriated every single time. I feel like
| being shown a middle finger.
| NeoTar wrote:
| Automated website translation software will sometimes try to
| translate dates into 'English' so 04.01.2023 becomes
| 01/04/2023.
|
| I can see a time where it'll start trying to do the same for
| other units and the large numbers of metric using English-
| speakers will have to put up with 1600 km being translated to
| 1000 miles.
| shmerl wrote:
| And most indeed do. It's annoying when it doesn't happen.
| Metrication in US takes ages for no good reason.
| mgamache wrote:
| Non-paywall https://phys.org/news/2023-04-dwarf-planet-
| quaoar.html#:~:te....
| mellosouls wrote:
| Lacks the exciting, untruthful, "impossible" key clickbait
| word, something is amiss...
| jmclnx wrote:
| Far from a expert, I wonder if it has a small unseen satellite a
| bit away that keeps them together ?
| ksherlock wrote:
| OR a small seen satellite:
|
| "A potential explanation for Quaoar's distant rings is the
| presence of a moon, Weywot. The moon may have created
| gravitational disturbances that prevented the ring's particles
| from accreting into additional moons. Both rings occur in
| locations near what are known as resonances with Weywot, and
| the resonances may turn out to be more important than the Roche
| limit for determining whether rings turn into moons or remain
| as rings."
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Waitwhat? Nice name.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I'm just worried we will give a super silly name to the
| planet of our future overlords
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Yeah, if the rings is actually solar panel satellites
| kept in orbit by design
| hinkley wrote:
| Orbital death ray platform.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| You live on a planet named after dirt.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The dirt is the most important part! But I'd argue it's
| more of an issue of not having a real name.
| NeoTar wrote:
| Arguably the 'real' name should be Terra (i.e the Roman
| name for the goddess of the Earth). But which also looks
| like the word 'dirt', but just wearing its Sunday best.
|
| Although I totally support calling the moon 'Diana'.
| dllthomas wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weywot#Name
|
| "Brown left the choice of a name up to the Tongva, whose
| creator-god Quaoar had been named after. The Tongva chose
| the sky god Weywot, son of Quaoar."
| tagami wrote:
| Perhaps these rings exist because an event happened recently on
| the cosmic scale and had yet to devolve/evolve.
| [deleted]
| shagie wrote:
| Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/science/quaoar-
| rings-kuip...
| metadat wrote:
| Long-term archive links:
|
| https://archive.today/ysh6g
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230501172303/https://www.nytim...
| miah_ wrote:
| FWIW gift links don't work if you turn off all tracking stuff
| in Firefox. It still always asks me to buy a sub to nytimes.
| archive.today/archive.org links are so much more useful.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| With NT Times it also works if you hit the stop loading
| button before the paywall comes up.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| You can also just disable javascript for nytimes.com and
| the full article renders without the paywall
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(page generated 2023-05-01 23:01 UTC)