Space agency says ‘certain cosmic nicknames are insensitive’ and vows to drop any reference to them
Nasa has signaled it is joining the social justice movement by changing unofficial and potentially contentious names used by the scientific community for distant cosmic objects and systems such as planets, galaxies and nebulae.
In a statement last week, the space agency said that as the “community works to identify and address systemic discrimination and inequality in all aspects of the field, it has become clear that certain cosmic nicknames are not only insensitive, but can be actively harmful”.
The space agency's forthcoming action plan has been a long response to a NASA-commissioned white paper that surfaced in June calling for a reformation of the service's initials, NASA and S.N.A. "A lot has happened over the last 12 months, and space exploration will be influenced by it," Kathy Lueders, a NASA-funded astrophysicist, told SPACE.com at the NAMM show in Anaheim, California.
"If that is the case," Ms. Lueders said, "the next step is to solve what is inadequate in those nicknames."
That deliberation is complex; at its core is the thorny question of how to apply physics and astrophysics to the disparate realities of humanity's place in the universe; something that has produced countless religious, political and political movements over the centuries and continues to throw up new toss-ups on a daily basis.
"We see a lot of different things in space," Ms. Lueders said in an interview last week. "Anything that could relate to something somewhere, in the cosmos, not just a person. We view ourselves as explorers of different worlds."
But in the scientific community, where various theories and theories often reference invisible objects and the events that spawned them, the cosmic nicknames issue has been a point of contention.
The reasoning behind the unnecessary names reflects particular concerns about picking names for the very big, very mysterious.
In the microgravity world of microgrids and optoelectronics, assigning a first-gravity-significant element to stimuli tends to push the discussion out of good ol' physics and into the metaphysics of the universe itself. In contrast, the name "Einstein" invites at least an attempt at semantic legibility in a field sensitive to space-time forces and phenomena.
One such example is the name "Lincoln" for a hypothetical planet located in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The idea is that a celestial body's mass, density and shape are all influenced by the gravitational pulls exerted upon it by other bodies in its vicinity.
For the lucky few 14-dimensional extraterrestrial candidates out there for science to name—or even just quantify—Steven F. Hassan, a complex zero-dimensional gas giant based in Australia, nears the conclusion that his creation is in fact called the Glumpakatran. Mr. Hassan detected the transiting binary Glumpakatran event at precession of 189,
Nasa has signaled it is joining the social justice movement by changing unofficial and potentially contentious names used by the scientific community for distant cosmic objects and systems such as planets, galaxies and nebulae.
In a statement last week, the space agency said that as the “community works to identify and address systemic discrimination and inequality in all aspects of the field, it has become clear that certain cosmic nicknames are not only insensitive, but can be actively harmful”.
The space agency's forthcoming action plan has been a long response to a NASA-commissioned white paper that surfaced in June calling for a reformation of the service's initials, NASA and S.N.A. "A lot has happened over the last 12 months, and space exploration will be influenced by it," Kathy Lueders, a NASA-funded astrophysicist, told SPACE.com at the NAMM show in Anaheim, California.
"If that is the case," Ms. Lueders said, "the next step is to solve what is inadequate in those nicknames."
That deliberation is complex; at its core is the thorny question of how to apply physics and astrophysics to the disparate realities of humanity's place in the universe; something that has produced countless religious, political and political movements over the centuries and continues to throw up new toss-ups on a daily basis.
"We see a lot of different things in space," Ms. Lueders said in an interview last week. "Anything that could relate to something somewhere, in the cosmos, not just a person. We view ourselves as explorers of different worlds."
But in the scientific community, where various theories and theories often reference invisible objects and the events that spawned them, the cosmic nicknames issue has been a point of contention.
The reasoning behind the unnecessary names reflects particular concerns about picking names for the very big, very mysterious.
In the microgravity world of microgrids and optoelectronics, assigning a first-gravity-significant element to stimuli tends to push the discussion out of good ol' physics and into the metaphysics of the universe itself. In contrast, the name "Einstein" invites at least an attempt at semantic legibility in a field sensitive to space-time forces and phenomena.
One such example is the name "Lincoln" for a hypothetical planet located in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The idea is that a celestial body's mass, density and shape are all influenced by the gravitational pulls exerted upon it by other bodies in its vicinity.
For the lucky few 14-dimensional extraterrestrial candidates out there for science to name—or even just quantify—Steven F. Hassan, a complex zero-dimensional gas giant based in Australia, nears the conclusion that his creation is in fact called the Glumpakatran. Mr. Hassan detected the transiting binary Glumpakatran event at precession of 189,
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