Trouble with naming science

Struggling with garlic, debating for many years . are the happenings around naming this newly discovered butterfly, letting the element that has just found it or for the star to see it.

First of all, this is a daily affair of chemistry. The controversial issue around naming cases has existed for decades. In 1969, for example, people lost their temper when choosing a name for element 104. Both the Soviet Union and the United States claimed to have discovered this element first. The Soviet Union proposed the name kurchatovium for element 104, after the scientist Igor Kurchatov (director of the atomic program of the Soviet Union), but the United States insisted on rutherfordium, according to the original British physicist New Zealand Earnest Rutherford (who won the Nobel Prize and created the foundation for atomic structure theory).

The story was not until the 1980s and a conference - held to give some principles to name the element 104 as well as new elements later - decided to name element 104 as unnilquadium. However, after that, the International Union of Pure Chemistry and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) changed 104 into rutherfordium, as originally proposed by the United States.

Heavy smell of cold war

Element 106 is still known as seaborgium - the author's name is bent (Photo: ny.us) In 1994, IUPAC produced a long list with predefined names for elements that could appear in future. However, the American Chemical Society (ACS), which is responsible for naming in the field of American chemistry, immediately objected. The battle was more intense when IUPAC demanded that the United States rename element 106 (called seaborgium), based on the argument that the Nobel Prize-winning American scientist Glenn Seaborg was still alive. ' Don't wait until people die to get their names!' - My side rebutted.

Americans do not agree with the name dubnium, taking the place of Dubna (Soviet Union), where the laboratory created this element. This attitude is seen as choking on the cold war. Until 1997, the official name for elements 101 to 109 was unified. The law puts the elemental name under the name of the living person bent and element 106 is still called seaborgium. America prevails in convincing people to agree on the choice of element 104 as rutherfordium (as mentioned above). However, the Soviet Union did not lose when element 105 was changed to dubnium.

In astronomy, naming is also very troublesome. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) stipulates that the names of politicians or military men are prohibited from being set, until one century after the discovery or after the character (whose name is want to get put) died. The name that sounds crude, obscene, meaningless, sounds like many names, or more than 16 letters . is prohibited. In astronomy, people also seem to despise those who take their names or the name of a pet in the house for the star they discovered.

In the early days of choosing the names of meteorites, people enjoyed taking names in the history of classical literature or myths (goddesses, warriors in the Trojan war .). Now, the most popular is choosing the names of artists: (John) Lennon (meteor 4147), Paul McCartney (4148), Zappafrank (Frank Zappa, 1940-1993, American composer) for meteorite 3834 . .

With the moons and the surface features of the planet in the universe, the Latin-bearing name still likes to be used. In 1998, the name Caliban (not Taliban!) And Sycorax were proposed for the 16th and 17th moon of Uranus. The IAU has not yet approved these two names but may not object because they maintain the tradition of naming Uranus's moons according to the characters of Shakespeare. However, even in this case there are exceptions, for example, the two great stars of Uranus are named after a poem by Alexander Pope (British poet, 1688-1744).

Trouble with biological names

The Brontosaurus dinosaur was renamed Apatosaurus. (Photo: earthlink.net) Neither astronomy nor chemistry causes headaches in biology. With more than a million species of living things (not to mention fossils) that have been identified and millions of other organisms still unknown, the naming problem is extremely complex. Currently, the most common way is still to name themselves, according to the general principle: not crude, dirty, discoverers do not name themselves . Once appeared in text or newspapers, considered as The official name was born.

Tradition is still the name of two words (edited by Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné in the 1750s): the first word is the same, the second word is the species (both usually Latin and false Latin tail of The word must also conform to the Latin grammatical law of male-female breeding. Naming this way is complicated and hard to remember, not to mention the confusing situation.

For example, there is a snail called Bahumbugi, but there is also a spider named Dracula bramstokeri and two bees Agra phobia and Agravation . Even more strange, the name of composer Frank Zappa was once given to a meteorite. appears on a freshwater fish. Sometimes, due to this confusion, many names have changed over time. The Brontosaurus dinosaur was turned into Apatosaurus by the same condition.

For years, people have struggled to find naming standards for zoology, botany, microbiology and viruses . but all of them raised their hands to surrender. After all, error is a characteristic of people. Nothing is complete, even the circle has never been completely round. Spending a lot of effort to explore the world is a bit hard and take some time to think about the name given to it. Even the name is just a sign to identify.