Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Scientific Theories Renamed.

As Calvin so famously observed, scientists lack creativity. They can imagine all the matter in the universe exploding out of a point smaller than the head of a pin, but they can't come up with a more creative name than "the Big Bang". He then so creatively renames it "the Horrendous Space Kablooie".

With that in mind, I think we need to get to work renaming the more boringly-named scientific theories. I'll give some current theories' names, a description of the theory, and some other suggestions. Feel free to throw in your contributions in the comments.

Giant Impact Hypothesis (Wikipedia).
This ultimately-cool scientific hypothesis states that the formation of the moon resulted after a roughly Mars-sized planet, called "Theia", which formed in Lagrange point 4 or 5, and when the Earth was only a few dozen million years old, struck the Earth at an oblique angle. Much of Earth's and Theia's mantles were thrown off into space; Theia's core sank into Earth's core; And about two percent of Theia's mass ended up as a ring around the earth, which, over the next hundred years coalesced into the moon. This helps to explain certain things, such as why the moon orbits the Earth at roughly Earth's equator, and certain similarities in composition between the Moon and Earth.
Possible new names:
The Most Hugely Gigantic Explosion in the World.
Inter-planetary Billiards.
Impact! When Worlds Collide: A New Film by Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer.

Supermassive Black Holes (Wikipedia).
Nevermind that "black hole" is a boring-enough term for what it names, but now scientists think that most, if not all, galaxies have formed with a black hole between a hundred thousand and ten billion times the mass of the sun in the center. Interestingly, the density of said black holes may be less than that of air, since the volume of the black hole increases as the cube of the radius, while the mass increases merely linearly.
Possible new names:
The Stupendously Huge Pit of Doom.
The Inescapable Ball of Suck.
Unicron: Destroyer of Worlds.

Velociraptor (Wikipedia).
In recent news, paleontologists have discovered that Velociraptors had feathers. This was shown by the presence of quill knobs on the fossils. What's interesting to note is that quill knobs are not usually found in flightless birds today, which indicates that at least the ancestors of dromaeosaurids could fly. So now we have the most fearsome predator ever to stalk the Earth, and which, possibly, could fly. And the only name they can come up with for it is swift thief. (Yes, yes, I know. The Velociraptors in Jurassic Park were actually Deinonychus, which means a slightly-more fearsome "terrible claw".)
Possible new names:
Vicious, Bloody Killers of the Late Cretaceous.
Winged Doom.
Death by Sharp Pointy Teeth.

Intelligent Design (Michael Behe's Amazon.com blog, because I don't trust Wikipedia on this one).
So most scientists claim to love how science challenges belief. They love to point to examples like that of their Saint Galileo, who nobly and heroicly stood up against the Evil Catholic Church, which was doing its utmost to force ignorance on the masses to keep any sort of learned men from challenging the house-of-cards that is Christianity, for the slightest challenge to any of its teachings would make it collapse (the actual story of Galileo is not nearly as dramatic; the Catholic Encyclopedia has a good explanation of what really went on with that whole Church-Galileo-Geocentrism thing). But heaven help you, should you challenge their beliefs. For instance, even though any decent mother's son what calls himself a scientist will acknowledge that scientific theories are ever changing and, erm, evolving, its best not to rile them by suggesting that Darwinsim doesn't explain everything and the theory might do well with some changing and, erm, evolving.
Possible new names:
And God Said, Let It Be Complex.
Not The Same Thing as Creationism.
Eat It, Darwinists.

1 comment:

  1. I have a suggestion for intelligent design: "Evolution if evolution worked and was efficient"

    or "Life-blöød: Destroyer of entropy!"

    Ok, that last one was more like a good band name than a good name for Intelligent design.

    ReplyDelete