Weird thoughts - terms

[Usquanigo]

The other day, I had a weird thought go through my head. Kind of like how some of us wondered what we would call the new "ought" years (2001 through 2009), and if we would call 2000, two thousand, or twenty hundred (lol).

So right now - we have 1 moon that really matters to us here on Earth. So it is THE moon. We also have 1 sun that matters, so it is THE sun.

Well... when we start colonizing other planets, then what? "The moon" could mean anything. In isolation, it might be ok, but there is certain to be an interplanetary internet, and people living on Mars wouldn't mean Luna when they said "The Moon", so it could be confusing. Would we then start calling it by it's real name, rather than clasification?

And what about the sun.... Sol. From that, we get Solar. As in, Solar Power. But.... What if we find a habitable body around another star (just for the sake of using a name, let's say Proxima Centauri), would that then be Centauri power when in that system? Or would it just be star power? Because technically it wouldn't be Solar power in that case.

And for that matter, why is Earth the only planet that doesn't conform to naming convetion? Why don't we call it Terra? I found nothing on Wikipedia to answer that one.

:shrug:

 

[Izack]

I think if Luna were colonised, it would become important enough to have a proper name.

Astral power?

Why doesn't Concorde conform to the naming convention?

On a serious note, I think Earth is called 'the Earth' for exactly the opposite reason for Concorde. It's an obvious example of how much we take the existence of this miraculous temperate ball of gravitationally-bound matter for granted. It's just 'the Earth.' It's not even necessary to capitalise it. It's always been there, and in our minds always will be. Same for the Sun and Moon.

I think any society capable of living among the stars would have a better sense of perspective, and more respect for the Universe (not the world, the Universe) in which they lived. Still, they would likely continue to call Milky Way 'the Galaxy,' until such time as they progressed even further.

Hahah, this is as long than your original post, isn't it?

 

[Eccentrus]

well, it's also for the same reason that people call humans "man" like mankind not humankind etc... it's the leftover of the antrophocentric idea of the universe, that the universe, the earth, etc were created for men (yeah, I'm talking about back in the days), while in reality humankind is nothing more than a fraction of a pixel

well if you want so much as changing the sol naming for a lot of terms (like solar power, solar system, etc) we can always change it to sidus (which mean star in Latin) so it will be a Sidar system, Sidar power, but it will take long though for the naming conventions to be changed

 

[Usquanigo]

Izack - Did you mean The Concorde SST Jet? I've never heard of anything called just Concorde. Concord yes, next to Lexington, but that's pronounced differently. lol

Eccdntrus, interesting idea, Sidar... however, is it an "i" like in 'sick' of 'if', or is it an "E" sound like 'see'? Because I see it and in my head I keep thinking of something powered by a wooden closet (Cedar). lol

 

[Izack]

Yeah, the jet. I've always heard it referred to as simply Concorde, like here:
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde"]Concorde - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

[Usquanigo]

Such a pretty thing. A real shame it was retired. I have to agree with Clarkson, that it's retiring is kind of like a step backwards. Or perhaps an additional step backwards (we make it to the moon, then get stuck in LEO, now we even tossed our space plane and are going back to primitive capsules).

 

[IgnoreThisBarrel]

Usquanigo, I NO RITE?

Also to that list I would like to add deorbiting Mir and Skylab. Such a waste; we could have just strapped on a rocket and sent them out of Earth's orbit (or at least up higher into a virtually atmospheric-drag-less orbit). I also here we might deorbit the ISS in 2016 or 2020. Shame shame shame.

 

[River Crab]

Mir was certainly not a waste. It was practically falling apart by the time Mircorp bought it. I think it had a very good lifespan, Russian hardware is built to last because it's usually made to last.
Anyway, that's off topic.
With colonies on Mars, they have 2 moons themselves so they would call them by their names. Besides, an interplanetary internet would be really slow, so people would have to think things out like they're writing a letter for the snail-mail.
In the broader scope of things, we might change our nomenclature once we extend to an interstellar scale, but for now, it's just convenient to call them "The Earth," "The Sun," and "The Moon".
If there are other/parallel universes, we are also being ignorant calling it "The Universe," right?

 

[Usquanigo]

An interplanetary internet wouldn't be that slow. Remember, 1 AU is 8 light minutes. When Earth (Terra, hehe) and Mars are at opposite points in their orbit, it might take a half hour or so for round trip communication, but certainly plenty fast for forums and web pages. Especially if you had good cache servers at wither end for the later (web sites, changes happen infrequently enough that the time delay for updates is no big deal, as long as there are good servers are located locally at each end - easier for Mars websites on Earth than vice versa, but in time, they would end up being more focused on their own internet anyway).


As for the idea of a multi-verse, it's not incorrect for us to still say "the universe" when we are talking about our own little slice of space-time. If we are talking about all of them at once, then it would be the multi-verse. I suppose once/if we start travelling between them we'll have to name them.