Comments on: How Galaxies Choose to Relax is Their Own Damn Business

By: The difficult childhood of gravitational waves | Cosmic Variance

The difficult childhood of gravitational waves | Cosmic Variance — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:54:53 +0000

[...] Gravitational waves were born from the mind of Einstein in 1918. He noticed that his brand-spanking-new field equations for the general theory of relativity had a simple wave solution in the weak field regime. These solutions represent propagating waves in the fabric of spacetime, traveling at the speed of light. In another fit of creative nomenclature these were dubbed “gravitational waves”. For a ring of particles floating in space, a passing gravitational-wave will cause them to oscillate (image at right stolen from the Wikipedia entry). For an introduction to the theory behind gravitational waves, I highly recommend chapter 7 of a certain textbook. (Sean, I get a kickback, right?) [...]

By: Stephen Uitti

Stephen Uitti — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:04:13 +0000

In addition to head, mechanical engineers talk about male and female parts of various fasteners, which have obvious visualizations. The list goes on and on, though it’s been awhile since i was in school.

By: Amara

Amara — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 21:25:03 +0000

Mmm, the physics field is _full_ of provocative words; it’s hard _not_ to laugh sometimes.

Once many years ago, I found myself caught in a bit of physics and chess word play in email with someone that I barely knew. I don’t remember which one of us started it, but I think I never laughed as hard in an email conversation as I did with that particular person. Take a look at what you can do with the physics terms.

——

(A provocative chess game in progress here ……)

Do you see that, in this suuuuuuubtle chess game, you are forcing me to ask to your magnetic field to induce MY electric field ?

Check.

You could place your piece in a reference frame where my forces are no longer valid.

You could place your piece in a static magnetic field and let MY moving current loop induce YOUR electromotive force.

You could forfeit the game, and we could alternate the induction.

——
I’ll stop here and let your imaginations fly…. Happy Friday!

By: stand

stand — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 19:55:55 +0000

Speaking of astro-nomenclature, I always enjoy the humor that non-astronomer scientists, especially chemists, get from the fact that astronomers divide the matter constituents of the universe into Hydrogen, Helium and Metals.

By: John Phillips

John Phillips — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 11:24:51 +0000

I have nothing to contribute to the subject at hand except to enjoy the various contributions. Add to it a post on Korea’s version of Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics followed by New Mexico legislating Pluto still a planet and this blog really does live up to the title Cosmic Variance as well as raising a smile and a chuckle on a grey Friday morning here in the UK. Long may you continue

By: David

David — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 06:52:48 +0000

The first talk I had to give in a grad astro course was on “ram pressure stripping.” My title page was interesting, though it’s a shame I can’t draw better.

And then I gave a talk on the high helium sequence of Omega Cen. I started thinking about this high sequence, and on one slide I used the words “joint,” “blunt,” “chronic,” and “weed” (as in “this is a chronic difficulty, how to weed out the contamination”). Nobody noticed until I pointed it out… I was so sad.

By: Peter Erwin

Peter Erwin — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 14:14:12 +0000

Magnetic Confinement Fusion seems to be stuck on food names- Banana orbits, sausage instabilities, kidney bean profiles, etc.

Galaxy dynamics has its share of fun names. Box and tube orbits are a bit utilitarian, but there are banana (and anti-banana) orbits, and pretzel orbits, and fish orbits…

By: Risa

Risa — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 13:50:26 +0000

AstroDyke, I totally agree, despite being friends with the person who introduced this terminology. Even worse is when people go so far as to call their sort-of gas-rich mergers “moist”, a word which really should be banned from polite conversation.

Sean, I’ll be happy to bring it up and lower the discourse. In the stairwell outside my door in LASR, there was, among other posters of heavenly bodies, one that says “Explore Uranus”. Even after seeing it every day for 3 years, it never failed to crack me up on my way in to work.

By: ashamed of myself

ashamed of myself — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 12:16:16 +0000

Somehow, during the late nights studying quantum mechanics with fellow graduate students, the Lippmann-Schwinger equation turned into the Lick-My-Dinger equation (say “my” with a southern accent: “mah”). I don’t know how that happened, but I can’t get it out of my mind.

By: PK

PK — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 09:15:42 +0000

I remember shuffling and giggling in the lecture theater when our prof introduced the penetration depth.

By: Quasar9

Quasar9 — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 08:48:12 +0000

Well Julianne, as galaxies go
The Sombrero Galaxy has everything
It could be a glowing halo
It could be an Etermity Ring, except we know nothing in The Universe is eternal, except perhaps the universe itself (or that from which it proceeded).

It could be the place some men would want to plunge into head first (the place whence they came from), the place of mystery, untold wonders & de-light

If the galaxy is female it could be The bulge means that it is pregnant
If the galaxy is male The bulge could simply means it drinks a lot of bubbles (CO2 from beer or coke) …
or maybe the bulge indicates the galaxy is indeeed happy to see U.

By: Yvette

Yvette — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 07:49:41 +0000

“I’ve been reading about the beginning of the universe. They call it ‘The Big Bang’. Isn’t it weird how scientists can imagine all the matter of the universe exploding out of a dot smaller than the head of a pin, but they can’t come up with a more evocative name for it than ‘the Big Bang’? That’s the whole problem with science. You’ve got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder.”
“What would you call the creation of the universe?”
“The horrendous space kablooie!”

I’m amazed a discussion of scientific nomenclature got so far without someone bringing that up…

By: Apparent Brightness

Apparent Brightness — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 07:47:27 +0000

Calling Things

Julianne from Cosmic Variance has a hilarious comment about nomenclature in astronomy. I agree that there is some strange slang around that even other physicists might not get. An all-time favourite is of course calling all atoms except Hydrogen and H…

By: Jesse

Jesse — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 06:37:04 +0000

Magnetic Confinement Fusion seems to be stuck on food names- Banana orbits, sausage instabilities, kidney bean profiles, etc.

By: Julianne

Julianne — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 03:33:30 +0000

If Cosmic Variance is responsible for bringing sexy back, then we all are in big, big trouble.

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 03:27:27 +0000

This blog could use some sexying-up, in my opinion.

But Mark made me promise I wouldn’t share any of those stories he told me.

By: Doug

Doug — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 03:26:50 +0000

Hairy black holes are pretty fun too.

By: Douglas

Douglas — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 02:31:18 +0000

Julianne, I have to give it to you: you always add the spice of explicit sexuality to this blog.

By: sysrick.com

sysrick.com — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:27:38 +0000

[...] How Galaxies Choose to Relax is Their Own Damn Business [...]

By: loonunit

loonunit — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:21:38 +0000

Does it make me a bad feminist if I’m one of the people in the audience who thinks it’s funny when the dry merger discussion leads to the inevitable outcome?

And I suppose “fluid” mergers aren’t much better?