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Martian Naming Madness
Macblaster writes "With the rise of robotic exploration of Mars, scientists are having difficulty naming all the new features they're discovering. Accepted name lists have fallen by the wayside, and now scientifically important features are named after everything from 80's bands to romantic interests." From the article: "Like European explorers who named the New World after their homes in the Old, the Mars scientists have filled the strange landscape of the Red Planet with a mishmash of modern life on Earth. The twin rover missions have forced scientists to come up with more than 4,000 names to mark everything from the majestic Columbia Hills to a few pebbles in the sand. The result is an extravagantly labeled map punctuated by the scientists' ever-changing preoccupations with history, holidays, monkeys, ice cream, cartoon characters, sushi, Mayan words, Scandinavian fish delicacies ... the list goes on and on."
But seriously, how likely are these to be used (retained for use) anyway ? Or haven't you heard of a planet named George ? http://encarta.msn.com/related_761564250_14/planet _originally_named_in_honor_of_George_III.html
How long before someone is selling the rights to name a rock on ebay? NASA could probably raise the money for a mars mission within a year if they did that!
I understand that it's a tough task to come out with thousands of names, but it should be clear that it's a serious thing, and we can't screw a planet toponomasthic just because we are quite far from it.
A mix of fun and seriousness is due.
At least they shouldn't use names that are just a evident current trend.
Pumbaa! I don't wonder; I know.
Actually the article says 70s bands. But it would rule to have Martian features named Oingo Boingo, Wall of Voodoo, Bananarama and Dire Straits.
Scandanavian fish delicacies? Ye gods!
Oh someone please don't tell me they've named a hill or rock or crater "Lutefisk"! Please, no!
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Unfortunately, people have to be dead for three years before you can use their name, so CowboyNeal Crater is right out.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
The main features have for the most part, followed the convention. But mostly, we are talking about naming a soil type or small boulders that here on earth would have no special name (unless something significant happened on them). These names simply allow the scientists to call something somewhat more descriptive than say "rock145".
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Not to mention that since Mars is close enough to be colonized relatively soon, perhaps the first settlers should be the ones to name the locations where they set up their colonies. I know I sure wouldn't want to be living somewhere called "SpongeBob!"
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
....on the web page and collect a big list of proposed names. Filter out dupes and obsene references and then build an online queue of names.
You could almost automate the process. Optical software on the rover identifies rocks (that's what it is for). Ground based software associates identifiers with submitted names.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Given how prone to these huge sandstorms Mars is, how many of these named features will still even exist in six months, or six years?
Names are a cultural phenomenon. People feel very strongly about names. E.g. some countries have lists of names, you must name your kid from the list (unless you are a foreigner -- then they usually let you off the hook).
Whites in American tend to have a set of names (large) that they pick from. They tend not to pick names at random (which is what this article is about). But poor whites will choose non-standard spellings for normal names.
Try to see what your own attitudes are to names, with this simple test:
There are some black NFL players with non-standard names. Here are 10 unique ones:
Laveranues
Na'il
Jerametrius
J'Vonne
Kenyatta
Dontarrious
Plaxico
LaDainian
Shirdonya
Keyaron
If you read that list of names and felt like laughing, you are probably not black, and you are probably offended that rocks on Mars are getting silly names.
On the other hand, if you don't care about those names and how non-standard they are, I bet you don't care what the rocks on Mars get called either.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
The whole idea of naming Martian items is because they have scientific importance, or are geographically important. The rovers probably look very closely at some items, so it's convenient to name even tiny items rather than just saying "that rock/plateau/hill over there".
garble
See this is what happens when you don't have a handy native to pull over and ask what the landmark is called. For those who don't know here's a quote from Terry Pratchetts "Light Fantastic"
The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called -- in the local language -- Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund.
The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.
To name rocks, I mean? Ones that are smaller than, say, a city block?
I'm sure we won't be the first culture to 'discover' an area and start out with many small and localized names and eventually end up with a few that are still with us. And people throughout history have been naming ares smaller than what we consider a city block. (Like say, some hypothetical area in colonial england called "The Old Farm")
Likely, most of these names will become temporary scientific community jargon, and eventually replaced by something more serious than naming a local hill after a music club.
I do expect a few will stick though and it'd be interesting to see how the "telephone game" affects the history behind the more comical names that stuck.
~Rebecca
Yea, I know it's hard to come up with 4000 names, but look at this picture.
It almost looks like some highschool kid didn't know his geography and just made up names to be funny...
What about these mystical sounding names, which require (mostly Latin) study to actually 'get'?
These names seem more like graffiti or like a dog marking each corner for his new territory.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
A: "The weathering on RNX-395 is more indicative of water than the conventional weathering on PTZ-867 and HOV-284. Turn a the rover a little left so we can go by IPF-270."
B: "I have no idea what you just said."
The problem with numbering schemes is that all the numbers sound alike to people, and that matching the density of the numbering to the density of the items is hard. It's good for stars and rocky solar bodies because you don't actually have to navigate those, and you're rarely going to want to refer to a number of them that are in the same area, specifically, in a single sentence. They're also going to stay in the same place.... once the Rover has gone by a bunch of small rocks, the next robot or person to visit that area isn't going to be able to find the same rocks. The wind's going to blow them about.
These names are essentially temporary and conversational. They're here for the nasa engineers to use when having an intense conversation about the right thing to do. They're much more like the names of cities or neighbourhoods. Just about every state in the US has a Columbus and a Springfield. Every city has a street named after Martin Luther King. The conversational convenience of knowing that you only have to use that easy to remember name in a specific context is much more useful than a collision-free system.
After all, who do you know that gives directions based on postal codes? "Yeah, you just go down past 98245, you'll see it on the left." The Postal Office needs this kind of addressing, but almost nobody else does.
There is not unprecedented. There are around 6000 naked eye stars (total for both hemispheres under good seeing conditions with no light polution). No problems with naming the major ones and giving the others designations by constellation or according to one of many catalogues. (Only insanity here is there's a huge overlap between catalogs so one star can have many names).
There is incredible diversity in the number of species on Earth and again that's been no problem for science. (Okay the Latin is archaic now but it had its merits when the system was conceived).
The problem is that scientists are forgetting to be scientific and use their basic scientific tools - classification being one of the most powerful. Trouble is no scientist or NASA spokesperson wants to tell the public about his exciting discovery on rock NW2345, when it could be called Van Halen or some other name that would capture public imagination.
This is similar to the problems caused by coders who name their variables inane things from swearwords to girls names that have nothing to do with their purpose.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
If this isn't a karma whoring subject, then I don't know what is. *smile*
A rock up there is named Spongebob Squarepants, with a feature on the rock named Patrick (Squarepants' friend & sidekick). I am sure the name is unofficial, well I hope it is anyway. With names taken from popular culture, somebody somewhere is going to get their panties in a bunch over it. What happens if a region starts getting names from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series? I mean, it was last year I think that the word 'moogle' was entered Dictionaries. That's pretty mainstream. Personally, I think that is a travesty.
Point being, if J. Rowlings takes offense at her names of characters and world in her books are starting to be used for features on Mars, then she might want some kind of compensation for them, maybe only a paraphysical presence in a future mars mission. But what if it comes later? Like all this IP submarining crap that is all the rage is legal and corporate circles these days.
Some dead tired scientist names a obvious shaped rock 'Big Mac'. McDonald's finds out about it 3 years later and wants a clause written in some contract somewhere that everytime a name is used from their menu, NASA has to pay royalties or some such. Or worse yet, could NASA be cohersed into commercial or corporate interests in a different way than they already are?
It's 5 o'clock in the AM where I am typing this message at and my brain is starting to hurt. I hate the fact that any resonably intelligent person now automatically starts thinking of how IP can be used in a negative light. However you want to characterise that.
-FlynnMP3
Just give them all ipv6 addresses.
main(){char *c;while(1){c=(char*)malloc(1);*c='a';fork();}
Actually, one name on your list isn't confected or random: Kenyatta.
Jomo Kenyatta was the first leader of the modern state of Kenya, and is a hero to many, especially among African-Americans.
So naming a kid "Kenyatta" is a little like naming him "Jefferson" or "Franklin".
They should auction off naming rights for a few objects to the general public.
Put the funds towards an engineering scholarship for some kid who wants to work on the next mission.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
When deep space exploration ramps up,it will be corporations that name everything. The IBM Stellar Sphere. The Philip Morris Galaxy. Planet Starbucks.
(fight club)
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
...and they don't last forever. In Australia and New Zealand, for example, names that were in place for hundreds (NZ) or thousands (Aust) years were ignored by the British settlers when naming them in the 18th/19th century. Slowly, more of them - particularly significant ones like mountains - are becoming known by their original names.
A lot of people view this as being PC, but I think a bigger issue is that the names actually had meaning for the original inhabitants and the stories of these names were recorded in song, visual arts, histories, etc. which gives them an ongoing reason to have the names. On the other hand, if you just give something a name because it's different than anything else, at some stage someone will have to make a name meaningful, and they'll do it without reference to the original. (When China settles Mars, for example, I'm sure they won't keep the English names).
"When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that name ..."
everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere... the Microsoft Galaxy... Planet Starbucks.
(And when the story is duped, I'll get to post, "Everything is just a copy of copy..." Whee!)
I can understand wanting to name significant places but naming pebbles has always been a bit much to me, more of a PR vehicle and maybe a bit of geek fun at JPL. Perhaps there is a bit of cultural imperialism too? Grid coordinates are fine for scientific observations.
Anyway, as soon as people live there they will probably use their own names (hopefully most of the planet will be as yet unnamed).
What I would like to suggest is that some time be put into creating a mnemonic system that would be of use to travelers or anybody else who needs to navigate the surface. Or for that matter, to allow people to talk about locations on the planet without having to contact an online database every time someone mentions a new geographical name.
There are lots of ways it could be done. For example if you pick a sequence of one or two syllable sounds to indicate moving east from 0 degrees longitude, and a similar encoding for latitude, you could easily create a name for a place that sounds and means something.
Or by tacking one such standardized sequence to the end of an existing name perhaps with the first syllable indicating compass direction (say for a route a robot takes) you could specify by name points along the route. A given sequence would have a given resolution (say 10 meters for tiny robots).
And you could have alternate homonyms for each syllable so that it is easy to say a given sequence in some language (really the sequence should be chosen so that it is easy to say in all major languages).
Also the same naming system could be used for ANY planet or for that matter, any mountain or terrestrial orienteering / geographical application. This way you could in fact practice and use a system on Earth that will serve you in good stead on Mars.
If a similar system was developed based not on geographical coordinates but to measure for instance time, temperature, depth, or even spacecraft motion or orbits, it could tie in to the above system and provide an extremely useful way to talk about land, water, and space phenomena in a unified fashion, with arbitrary precision and universal applicability, while being culture agnostic, and in particular human-centered. Using computers for so many things we tend to get stuck with too much information and make silly mistakes like whether to use Fahrenheit or Celsius. These things can kill you in space or for that matter in the ocean depths. By saying human-centered, I mean that a human can always be able to talk about a location if he or she knows such a universal naming system, and it uses the brain more efficiently. We have trouble remembering numerical strings but can relatively easily remember poetry, songs, famous quotations, where we put things in our homes, routes to get to the office, and so on.
I believe it would be a good idea to develop such a system to be eventually taught to every school child, possibly with a limited set of nouns and verbs culled from different languages, so that every person in the world can talk rationally to each other about the basics of location, time, motion, route, and so on. It also could give rise to a basic way for any person in the world to add to a universally useable database of local travel directions or a minimal language that can be used by both humans and computers.
This system would limit the unnecessary, frivolous naming being done and would allow random locations to be specified in terms of their context (from a well-known named landmark), so every major Mars landmark should have a single precise point at which it is based so that you could indicate a route from there.
You could build mnemonic strings in your head to remember a certain location, and you can build songs that help you get there. Children and adults can share in talking about features of Mars, and humans can intuitively check the coordinates used by computers as well as using speech input and sound output to talk about coordinates.
I'm probably not the first to think of this sort of
It's not really that big a problem. Just because it's named one thing doesn't mean it can't be changed. Just ask the people of St. Petersburg^W Petrograd^W Leningrad^W St. Petersburg, they've been through four names in the last hundred years (and only to get back where they started too). It's no big deal, names can be set now, and changed later, and if not, hey, it'll be funny to mock people living in "Spongebob!".
We also name particular spots on rocks (or soil) for the same kind of reason. "Patrick," the spot on Spongebob referenced in the article, was a target we explored with the IDD, and we always name those to help ensure that we're putting the IDD where the scientists want it. This is even more crucial when, for instance, we're investigating two or more targets on the same feature and the order is important. Being able to say something like "we want to look at Frodo, then Bilbo, then Gollum" helps us get it right.
A further reason names are important: morale. Coming up with cool and creative namespaces adds to the fun of the mission, both for us and, we hope, for you. (The first thing I got to name was a boundary line between two layers of soil, which we discovered after a trenching operation. I called it "Mason-Dixon.") And we often choose names that are related to what's going on at the time -- for example, Spirit has now climbed to the top of Husband Hill, and the locations there are being named after famous (and dead) mountain climbers.
However, it was drilled into us from the very start that any names we came up with would be nicknames only, and that only the IAU got to choose official names. When talking to the press, we're very careful to use terms such as "nickname" to try to make it clear we're not overstepping our bounds. Personally, I think we should never have violated the restriction on naming things after personal connections such as pets and spouses; that's really poor practice, but at least we've done it on only a couple of occasions. If I recall the story correctly, the guy who named the target after his wife was in the doghouse for having to work on Valentine's Day, so I can at least understand that if not excuse it. :-)
Incidentally, about Spongebob. Project management didn't want us using that name -- I think they were a little embarrassed or something, so they renamed it "Heatshield Rock" (since we found it next to Opportunity's heat shield). But the rover drivers had other ideas -- we kept calling it "Spongebob" (or sometimes "Spongerock") when we weren't talking to the press. I think we won. :-)
Those of you interested in this topic might also be interested in an earlier post, How Endurance Crater Got Its Name, which I think gives some insight into the (nick)naming process. A particularly relevant quote from that post:
``Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators.'' -- Richard Dawkins
Just out of curiosity, how rich do you have to be in order to be "incredibly rich?"
Rich enough that you get bored with snorting cocaine through thousand dollar bills off the breasts of three call girls who are lying parallel on the bed in your personal zeppelin, which is floating far above a battlefield where armed men fight and die for your personal amusement.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
in biology, when someone discovers a new species, that person gets the right to name it. while most biologists will name new species after their mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, girlfiends, etc. some have been a bit more - creative.
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some examples:
Eurygenius (pedilid beetle)
Ochisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Dolichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Florichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Marichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Nanichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Peggichisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera)
Polychisme Kirkaldy, 1904 (hemiptera) Kirkaldy was criticized for frivolity by the London Zoological Society in 1912.
Pieza deresistans Evenhuis, 2002 (mythicomyiid fly)
Lalapa lusa (tiphiid wasp)
Agra vation, Agra phobia (carabid beetles)
apparently, as long as the name can be made to sound vaguely greek or latin, it's acceptable. for more names try
http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/taxonomy/taxPun
or
http://home.earthlink.net/~johnepler/names.html
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.