The People Who Study Black Holes Need Some Vocabulary Help
By David Derbes, Guest Contributor
The great English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday, a brilliant autodidact with no more than a fourth grade education, made a series of fundamental discoveries in electricity and magnetism. Turn on a light switch, start your car, the electricity comes from Faraday’s Law. Searching for learned terms to describe his discoveries, he contacted William Whewell of Oxford. Whewell suggested the terms “anode”, “cathode”, “ion”, “electrode” and “dielectric” among others, all now in common use. Today’s scientists often lack a background in classical languages. When the need arises for a new term of art, they flounder, typically in English.
An example. Protons, neutrons and many other subatomic particles are thought to be constructed from smaller "quarks". These quarks are bound together by exchanging messenger particles. The mechanism is based on electromagnetism which binds atomic electrons to their nuclei. These electrically charged particles exchange different messengers: packets of light; "photons", after the Greek words for "light". A century ago physicists had Greek and Latin in their high schools. Sadly, when the quark model of protons was devised, nobody had enough Greek to come up with a name for the quarks' messengers, the particles whose exchange binds them together. So what are they cal "Gluons".
Astronomers long ago knew classical languages (the first modern translation of Apollonius of Perga’s Conics, into Latin, was made from Greek and Arabic by Edmund Halley of comet fame). Kepler (who knew both Greek and Latin well) realized that planets' orbits around the sun were not circles but ellipses. (Kepler is responsible for "focus", hearth. That is where sunlight is concentrated when a lens is used as a burning glass. Ellipses have two foci, off-center, and the Sun is located at one. Well,where else would you put the central fire but at the "burning place"?) The point closest the sun was called, in good Greek, the perihelion. Many stars in the universe (maybe half) occur in mutually orbiting pairs; they orbit a common point. The closest approach of each's orbit to this point is called its periastron. Recently much progress has been made in the study of black holes. Today's technology allows for the study of stars that move in elliptical orbits around black holes, thousands of light years away. The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for work on this topic.
In a very entertaining book (suitable for lay folk) by Clifford M. Will and Nicolás Yunes, Is Einstein Still RIght?, the authors say (p. 165)
"The relativity community has not managed to come up with a good term for [the closest point in] orbits around black holes. “Periholion” doesn’t thrill the community. Our colleague Scott Hughes at MIT has proposed “peribothros” using the ancient Greek word βοθροσ [sic] for hole, but Greek colleagues have pointed out that in modern Greek this word has a different (curse-word) meaning. We invite readers to send suggestions”.
Got any ideas? Cliff Will’s email is [email protected].
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When he wasn’t taking Classics courses at Princeton David Derbes majored in Physics. After the Tripos at Cambridge he earned his Ph.D. at Edinburgh. His teaching career in the States culminated at the Laboratory School of the University of Chicago.
By David Derbes, Guest Contributor
The great English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday, a brilliant autodidact with no more than a fourth grade education, made a series of fundamental discoveries in electricity and magnetism. Turn on a light switch, start your car, the electricity comes from Faraday’s Law. Searching for learned terms to describe his discoveries, he contacted William Whewell of Oxford. Whewell suggested the terms “anode”, “cathode”, “ion”, “electrode” and “dielectric” among others, all now in common use. Today’s scientists often lack a background in classical languages. When the need arises for a new term of art, they flounder, typically in English.
An example. Protons, neutrons and many other subatomic particles are thought to be constructed from smaller "quarks". These quarks are bound together by exchanging messenger particles. The mechanism is based on electromagnetism which binds atomic electrons to their nuclei. These electrically charged particles exchange different messengers: packets of light; "photons", after the Greek words for "light". A century ago physicists had Greek and Latin in their high schools. Sadly, when the quark model of protons was devised, nobody had enough Greek to come up with a name for the quarks' messengers, the particles whose exchange binds them together. So what are they cal "Gluons".
Astronomers long ago knew classical languages (the first modern translation of Apollonius of Perga’s Conics, into Latin, was made from Greek and Arabic by Edmund Halley of comet fame). Kepler (who knew both Greek and Latin well) realized that planets' orbits around the sun were not circles but ellipses. (Kepler is responsible for "focus", hearth. That is where sunlight is concentrated when a lens is used as a burning glass. Ellipses have two foci, off-center, and the Sun is located at one. Well,where else would you put the central fire but at the "burning place"?) The point closest the sun was called, in good Greek, the perihelion. Many stars in the universe (maybe half) occur in mutually orbiting pairs; they orbit a common point. The closest approach of each's orbit to this point is called its periastron. Recently much progress has been made in the study of black holes. Today's technology allows for the study of stars that move in elliptical orbits around black holes, thousands of light years away. The 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for work on this topic.
In a very entertaining book (suitable for lay folk) by Clifford M. Will and Nicolás Yunes, Is Einstein Still RIght?, the authors say (p. 165)
"The relativity community has not managed to come up with a good term for [the closest point in] orbits around black holes. “Periholion” doesn’t thrill the community. Our colleague Scott Hughes at MIT has proposed “peribothros” using the ancient Greek word βοθροσ [sic] for hole, but Greek colleagues have pointed out that in modern Greek this word has a different (curse-word) meaning. We invite readers to send suggestions”.
Got any ideas? Cliff Will’s email is [email protected].
--
When he wasn’t taking Classics courses at Princeton David Derbes majored in Physics. After the Tripos at Cambridge he earned his Ph.D. at Edinburgh. His teaching career in the States culminated at the Laboratory School of the University of Chicago.