Posted on 10/02/2023 8:50:28 AM PDT by Red Badger
Names have significance, especially when they’re written in the stars.
A group of astronomers is coalescing around an idea to rename two neighbors of the Milky Way, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.
Named after explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the satellite galaxies are visible with the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere. But Magellan’s name is not fitting, astronomer Mia de los Reyes and colleagues argue. The leader of the first expedition to successfully circle the globe, Magellan enslaved and killed Indigenous people encountered on the voyage, which set out from Spain in 1519 (SN: 9/17/19).
“Because we’re naming things in the night sky, which belongs to everyone, we think that it’s important to have names that reflect all of humanity,” says de los Reyes, of Amherst College in Massachusetts. She calls for the name change in an opinion piece published September 12 in Physics. Magellan’s voyage helped pave the way for Spanish colonialism in South America, Guam and the Philippines, says de los Reyes, who is Filipino American. “Many people see Magellan as a villain in the Philippines.”
The Magellanic clouds loom large in the field of astronomy. They’re independent galaxies, but close enough that astronomers can observe the individual stars within (SN: 4/1/22). “The Magellanic Clouds are this amazing laboratory for seeing things up close and personal,” says astronomer Sally Oey of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, a supporter of the name change.
Magellan wasn’t an astronomer. The clouds were noted by a member of his expedition, but they were already well-known to many cultures in the Southern Hemisphere, and even to previous European explorers. “It doesn’t make sense to have them named after any one person, let alone a person who never actually studied them,” says astronomer Gurtina Besla of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
Like they wouldn’t have found that anyway.
they are immune from their own asinine agenda requirements
First they came for Pluto, now for the Magellanic Clouds..
How about “ Laphonza “ Clouds.
Fad of the day.
Checks ALL the boxes.
But, there is a 97% Consensus of them... if 97% of them want to be silly, they'll be silly.
DeSoto and his men literally destroyed the native Americans lifestyle and ecology all across the Southeastern US.
They brought hundreds of pigs with the to use as food on their explorations.
Many of them escaped and became wild feral pigs that are still here to this day...................
Let’s, while we are at it, rename USA to
United States of Apples,
since this guy is a fruitcake and
We can’t use Amerigo Vespucci any more.
It’s all part of the left’s Amerigo-round.
I mean, the term “Magellanic clouds” is used in hundreds of textbooks, and thousands of papers, going back centuries.
So they’re going to generate some kind of Newspeak concordance to help students figure out what the new, woke astronomers are talking about?
Of course, that will be an occasion for every astronomy professor having to explain to their class all about the oppressiveness of the individuals for whom various stars and galaxies are named. Further chances for virtue signaling and preening, which takes up class time that would otherwise have to be filled with boring, difficult math.
Somebody discovered something.
Yes. Omar’s Exemption.
Sure thing, “Mia Of the Kings” - Your surname celebrates patriarchal hegemony and Conquistador funders.
You need to change it.
Most of the commonly known stars that have names are names in Arabic.
They enslaved more people (and still do) than all the Western nations combined................
Piss on this clown. I just read where New Mexico is reinstalling their statues of European Conquistadors now that all the venon from the Cancel Culture Clubbers tantrums has worn off. European colonizers are deserving of statues in New Mexico again. I hope we Texans can get our Texas Rangers statue reinstalled and the pre-adolescent Cancel Culture Clubbers can kiss our Red, White and Blue ....
Yes, the most prolific slave traders of all time.
Their religion gives them moral justification for enslaving whole nations. Not one word is breathed about that.
There are slave markets today, in muslim countries.
No Vice documentaries about those, though
And I said nothing, because I wasn’t a planet.
she’s special though- she exempts herself
Name them the Large Virtue Signaling Cloud and the Small Virtue Signaling Cloud.
They killed Columbus, now they’re on to Magellan. Their hatred for our civilization is insane.
I’m so effing sick of these people.
L
Can’t use ‘Large’ and ‘Small’, that would be ‘Size Shaming’...................
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