4 ms·
To me, neutron stars are one of the most awe-inspiring astronomical objects. However... > "Al dente" > "Previously, scientists didn’t know how large a mountai
by warent 8y ago
To me, neutron stars are one of the most awe-inspiring astronomical objects. However...
> "Al dente"
> "Previously, scientists didn’t know how large a mountain nuclear pasta could support."
This must be one of the most pop-sci articles I've ever seen.
- stevew20 8y agoSeriously, I thought I must've been misreading it serveral times lol. Not sure what the target audience is here, but regardless, it missed that audience
- phyzome 8y agoThe author isn't trying to be cute. Those are literally the terms the scientists use.. « These as-yet theoretical clumps are thought to be shaped like blobs, tubes or sheets, and are named after their noodle look-alikes, including gnocchi, spaghetti and lasagna. »
- time-of-flight 8y agoI don't think it's egregious at all. We use terms like "gnocchi phase", "lasagna phase", and neutron-star mountains regularly in the nuclear-matter literature, so these aren't indicative of any pop-sci "massaging" by the author.
- warent 8y agoI love this. I had absolutely no idea. Thanks for the info!
- andrepd 8y agoIt's descriptive of the shape of the pasta! Long strands of nuclear material in quark-gluon plasma are called "spaghetti phase", sheets of material are called "lasagna phase", etc.
- tomjakubowski 8y agoNaming things is a hard problem for computer programmers, but not for physicists. For them it's all fun!
- greglindahl 8y agoIt's not all fun for astrophysicists: the ApJ editors are pretty strict with trying to keep cute names out of the literature. One of my profs at grad school went through quite a bit of effort to get WIMPs as a name, publishing several posters and doing conference talks before submitting to ApJ for the first time.
- DiabloD3 8y agoWIMPs vs MACHOs is fucking hilarious. Although, sadly, I think both have been exhausted as options for the dark matter search. Then again, there has been like 140 dark matter/energy papers this year, and I haven't read them all.