Physicists usually get the props/scorn for crazy names, but astro-ph today reminded me that astronomers can frequently pull out names that shame even the kookiest bits of physics nomenclature.
So today I present to you “Gomez’s Hamburger”.
Gomez’s Hamburger is (as you may have guessed), not actually a gigantic threat to vegetarianism across the Galaxy, but instead is a “protoplanetary disk” seen edge-on. Stars usually form in molecular clouds from dense cores of gas and dust. Some of the higher angular momentum gas and dust, however, winds up not on the star itself, but in a rotating disk around the star. Some fraction of the material in the disk eventually winds up building a planetary system.
The picture at left shows some of the these disks seen in silhouette against the glow of the Orion nebula. Gomez’s Hamburger is what you get when one of these disks is seen perfectly edge-on. The dust in the disk blocks the light from the newly formed star in its center, making the burger, while light reflected from the upper layers of the disk is less shielded, and manifests as the bun.
January 28th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Oooo. many thanks for the images today – I have to write a lecture on the formation of the solar system, and Gomez’s Hamburger is… well… a very nice example to show. And a laugh, too.
To be honest, I much prefer the name Gomez’s Hamburger to some of names we’ve applied to rocks on Mars (Scooby Doo, for example). Much more descriptive!
January 28th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Until I see a cat photoshopped into that and a suitable lolcat statement appended, I will not be happy
January 28th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Doesn’t seem to come with fries though. What a bummer.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
My favourite astro-name is still “Carinae’s Defiant Finger” :
January 28th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
“Ding fries are done.”
January 28th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
> My favourite astro-name is still “Carinae’s Defiant Finger”
I always thought if that defiant middle finger was the first object that the ancient astronomers ever saw in the sky, the relationship between humans and religions would have taken an entirely different course.
January 28th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
If physicist nomenclature is kooky, just imagine what the philosophers are coming up with. Philosophy of Mind seems to have the edge on everyone else: Zombies, Swampmen, and Brains in Vats are all clear winners. But even philosophers of science have a few gems, including supertasks, the hole argument, and the Growing Block.
January 28th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Astronomers are the hungriest people around. It must be the hours. 3 out of every 4 astronomical metaphors or similes are food related. Moons are compared to cantaloupes or pizzas. Gomez’s Hamburger doesn’t come close to weirdest analogy. The raisin pudding model of the expanding universe is especially odd, considering how few people have ever encountered raisin pudding. Bananas, pancakes (especially pancakes) sugar crystals, “hungry” black holes… mmm. Astrophysics is delicious.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Mike,
You might be on to something. Observing all night does make one hungry, especially if it is cold.
When I visit an observatory I have never been to before, I ask colleagues who have been there
two questions, first how is the technical support and then how is the food. Rumor has it that the
best observatory food is at the VLT in Chile.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
I’m quite partial to Hoag’s object, personally. But as far as silly names go, Gomez’s Hamburger is silly, but in a good way; I think you’ll have to do quite a bit worse than that to compare to the “pretzelosity function” I saw a paper about on hep-ph a while back.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:51 pm
So the accretion disk seems thin in the ecliptic region and thicker on the “sides” in this view. Is that because light isn’t scattered enough in our direction by the upper and lower edges/surfaces of the disk??
January 29th, 2009 at 12:31 am
The vertical structure of disks is usually set by the balance between self-gravity (pulling the disk down) and pressure (puffing it up). You can get flaring if the density of the disk falls off sufficiently rapidly with radius that the pressure forces start to win.
January 30th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Chemists in the past have sometimes had fun with names as in the case of the hydrocarbon Dogcollarane but “When Albert Szent-Gyorgyi isolated ascorbic acid and published his findings, he called the new substance ‘ignose’ since he was convinced it was a sugar that resembled glucose and fructose, but was ignorant of its structure. When the journal editor refused to accept ignose as a sensible name, Szent-Gyorgyi suggested ‘Godnose’ instead! Alas the editor was neither imaginative nor humorous, and suggested that a more proper name had to be used” (http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/sillymols.htm).
I won’t comment on the arsenic containing ring with the name arsole (ibid).