further
I watched Anton Petrov’s last upload about galactic wandering supermassive black holes. In it he mentioned that it is estimated there are around 12 wandering SmBHs in the Milky Way. It reminded me of a thought I’ve pondered a few times about how the future will play out in the long term, like what will be the dead sea scrolls and prehistoric cave scribbles in 2k and 10k+ years, and why.
I believe future interstellar humans will value all data about the positions of the stars more than any other information we possess in the present. Long after all of our languages are dead and irrelevant, and our culture is to cringe to care about our backwardness, no one will place importance on the name, but the intrinsic knowledge will carry the name beyond any others of our epic.
Anyways, explaining it makes it seem a little less shower thought per say, but in my mind there is little distinction between ruminate abstraction and momentary epiphany. The momentary thought of 12 SmBHs roaming in relative secret, are the type of creeping monsters that likely haunt the future.
Star names chabge. Certain stars used to have Arab/Indian names. And Mesapotamian names before that.
In kde’s KStars program if you go back far enough to middle age, star-names will change.
Interstellar survey names will be changed. America wasn’t called America by the natives. The place where the pyramids were built wasn’t called Giza by the Egyptians.
I doubt that. There is no reason to do so. We still know the names of most ancient Greek or Chinese writers of works that held value. There is no reason to alter it in a substantive way that gains universal acceptance when the work is broadly distributed and public domain.
The North Star, Polaris, part of the little Dipper constellation, was named “Kynosoura” in ancient Greece. Kynosoura means, “The Dog’s tail.”
Star names will not last.
We know the names of great Greek and Chinese philosophers because of their work. So while the names of the stars might change, being the Einstein of your generation is a likely path to immortality.
If the Chinese name a consolation and the Greeks name it something else what is it’s name?
Unlikely.
You underestimate the size of the Universe. There’s 8 billion people on Earth, there’s about 200 billion stars in our galaxy, and between 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe.
Earth won’t heat death it will be burnt to a crisp by the sun
Heat death is likely the point when the oceans evaporate, at the latest, in around a billion years.
“Heat death” is the popular name given to hypothesis that the Universe will continue to expand and cool until there is no light or energy left. Using the term for Earth burning up is going to confuse people.
heat + death is not linguistically relevant through uniqueness. Arbitrarily reserving it is ludicrous in my opinion. Typical of the draconian nonsense for language and definitions that come out of astronomy though. The field needs a mulligan of a reformation already for the misinformation everywhere in the field. Like the fact planetary nebulae exists as nomenclature, a supermassive black hole is an asterisk, or star generations are defined ass backwards is all medieval guild secrecy level nonsense. Even with stars, we name all of the cyclones on the planet with a revolving list. Communication is Paramount. The human capacity to reference objects is exponentially more finite than the number of total objects and is in keeping with the number of names. Humans have both names and numbers to handle name instantiation. We do not give up communicating names in favor of numbers; we prioritize communication because that is the purpose of language. So I do not take the field seriously for any such primitive terminology. My use was straightforward and intuitive as all language should be, without dogma or tribalism. Off my soap box; the choice was intentional.
Communication is Paramount
Yeah, so you shouldn’t use a well-established term like “heat death” in your own way just because you feel it’s appropriate. Words have meanings. That’s how we communicate.
If I call you a nincompoop to say you’re really smart, just because I think there’s no clear etymology for the term, so it isn’t “linguistically relevant through uniqueness” (whatever the fuck that means) to say it means you’re foolish, you probably wouldn’t understand that’s what I meant. You might even take it as an insult. So our communication would have broken down through my misuse of a word with a well-established meaning.
You could’ve just said “oops, my bad I didn’t know that”
So much to do, so little time.
No it isn’t…
Or, you could name a new nebula something like 420F4rtG4s69. Tough choice…
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