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Scientific names
Jul. 6th, 2024 03:11 amBasically this post, again, except reformatted to not be a bunch of now dead tweets. I got to thinking about this stuff again, and remembered that I'd already written something about it.
Here is the original post, reformatted to not be Twitter:
It's funny how the general names given to certain things can sometimes make those things seem much scarier than they really are, e.g. Schwarzchild radius, Cherenkov radiation, Heisenberg uncertainty principle, Fermi paradox, Higgs boson, St. Elmo's fire, Schrödinger's cat, etc. I mean, granted, some of those things actually are a little freaky if you really stop and consider them, but the names can make them seem even scarier, in a strange way. Or they can make things that are completely innocuous sound sinister or at least more grandiose than they are.
Scientific phenomena named after people
List of scientific constants named after people
List of scientific laws named after people
Or maybe it's just that some people have scary-sounding names? I don't know. I mean, I guess the opposite is true, too. You could call something "the Bob effect," or "the Larry principle," or "the Timmy rule," and no matter how scary they may actually be, it still sounds silly.
But even then, if you had something called "Chad radiation," or "Cletus waves," or "the Bubba paradox," or "the Goober-Woody effect," it would still sound at least a little bit ominous, regardless of what it actually stands for. Basically, anything like "<name> radiation" or "<name> paradox" is always going to sound a little creepy, no matter what <name> may be and no matter what it's actually referring to.
Here is the original post, reformatted to not be Twitter:
It's funny how the general names given to certain things can sometimes make those things seem much scarier than they really are, e.g. Schwarzchild radius, Cherenkov radiation, Heisenberg uncertainty principle, Fermi paradox, Higgs boson, St. Elmo's fire, Schrödinger's cat, etc. I mean, granted, some of those things actually are a little freaky if you really stop and consider them, but the names can make them seem even scarier, in a strange way. Or they can make things that are completely innocuous sound sinister or at least more grandiose than they are.
Scientific phenomena named after people
List of scientific constants named after people
List of scientific laws named after people
Or maybe it's just that some people have scary-sounding names? I don't know. I mean, I guess the opposite is true, too. You could call something "the Bob effect," or "the Larry principle," or "the Timmy rule," and no matter how scary they may actually be, it still sounds silly.
But even then, if you had something called "Chad radiation," or "Cletus waves," or "the Bubba paradox," or "the Goober-Woody effect," it would still sound at least a little bit ominous, regardless of what it actually stands for. Basically, anything like "<name> radiation" or "<name> paradox" is always going to sound a little creepy, no matter what <name> may be and no matter what it's actually referring to.
