who was the fool who was tasked with naming the galaxy and the only adjective they could think of was ‘mmmmmmmmmmmmilky…’
scientist: (gazing up at space) scientist: ……….. it sure is a milky boy
NO
YOU DONT UNDERSTAND
ASTRONOMERS ARE THE SHITTIEST EVER AT NAMING THINGS I KID YOU NOT.
When it came time to name the two theoretical particle types that might be dark matter THEY INTENTIONALLY CHOSE THE NAMES SO THAT THE ACRONYMS WOULD SPELL “WIMPS” AND “MACHOS” I SHIT YOU NOT
THEY ARE FUCKING TERRIBLE AT NAMING ANYTHING
I just listened to a talk by Neil deGrasse Tyson himself LAST NIGHT and he went on about this more than once.
“I’m walking down the street and I’m like ‘ooh pretty rock…’ and some Geologist is like ‘actually, that’s anorthosite feldspar’ and I’m like ‘Nevermind, I don’t want it anymore.’ Any biologists in the audience? [some clapping] Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. The most important molecule in the human body, what did you name it? It has NINE SYLLABLES and it’s so long that even YOU GUYS abbreviate it as ‘DNA’!
But astrophysicists and astronomers? No, man, we call it like we see it. Star made of neutrons? NEUTRON STAR. Small white star? WHITE DWARF. You know that big red spot on Jupiter? Know what we called it? JUPITER’S RED SPOT.”
okay i’m glad you mentioned the biologist nonsense bc their naming methods are the bane of my existence
I see your astrophysicists-are-shit-at-names and raise you Marine-Biologists-Are-Fucking-Maniacs.
See this beautiful creature?
It’s a carnivorous deep-sea sponge that lives off of Easter Island and never sees the light of day, as it’s about 9000 feet down. Those delicate-looking orbs are covered in millions of tiny hooked spines, which latch onto anything unfortunate enough to bump into it, and hold it in place as it is digested alive by the sponge’s skin. Amazing, beautiful and profoundly creepy. They could have given it so many cool names. Could have drawn on mythology (I think Scylla would have been an appropriate reference), the region it was found in, the textured skin, PHAGOCYTOSIS, anything!
You wanna know what they called it?
PING-PONG TREE SPONGE.
Good job, marine biologists.
I’d like to introduce you to my friends:
The Donky Dung Sea Cucumber
The “Pig Butt Worm”
The Slippery Dick, named because it’s very good at wriggling free of nets.
The Sarcastic Fringehead, named for its big, obnoxious mouth
And the MonkeyFace Prickleback which is named like a YA fantasy novel monster.
And, during a recent deep-sea expedition (Broadcast live, I was watching the stream while it was happening)
They came across a super-rare fish, immediately nicknamed it “Falcor” and spent a solid chunk of time just following it around, talking about how great the fish was, and how happy they were to see it. (Some of the video here)
Anyway, Marine Biologists are maniacs and wonderful people
Sorry to butt in, but as long-winded as it is, there is NOTHING wrong with the nomenclature of DNA.
Deoxyribonucleic Acid. Working backwards:
Acid – yes, it has acidic properties. Don’t worry, it won’t dissolve anything.
Nucleic – it was first discovered, and generally resides, in the nucleus of the cell.
Ribo – short for ribose, meaning “of or containing sugar”, because it’s all connected together by sugar phosphates! (What we think of as “sugar” is usually just different arrangements of hexagonal and/or pentagonal carbons surrounded by a certain number of hydrogens and oxygens. In this case it’s mostly pentagonal.)
Deoxy – deoxygenated. RNA is Ribonucleic Acid, which has all of the same properties as DNA, so we call it DNA because it has one less oxygen in its sugar. This gives it extra chemical stability.
Honestly, I don’t know what else you wanted us to call it. Chemists and biochemists are necessarily specific with this sort of thing. So can it, Neil.
Twirly life string is a much better name and I will fight you on this.
“Anorthosite feldspar” is nothing.
Anorthosite is a rock.
Feldspar is a mineral.
Anorthite is a type of feldspar.
The milky way was named after the Goddess Hera’s spilled breastmilk.
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