Tuesday, November 27, 2007

who names the elements on the periodic table?

Well in the past newly discovered elements were named by the scientist that discovered them, such as polonium named by Marie Curie who first discovered and named it in honor of her homeland in Poland. But these days the elements names are decided by an International committee of chemists, and they are usually named after Greek gods, places, or scientists. Go figure, I guess if I ever find that elusive new elements or happen to suddenly come upon a new element out of just pure luck I guess jaynium is out of the question. Well at least we can still name stars at the International Star Registry, even though most starts are probably so distant that they will rarely be observed by any amateur astronomer observing the night sky, eh who cares, when that gigantic book with the names of stars and their RA and Dec my name will be in there. Of course this is not public since the star registry is a private company so most astronomers don't really care what the star is called it will just exist as a couple of letters and numbers depending on what galaxy the star is located in, or however else any of the many books published containing the coordinates of discovered stars happens to assign names to them. sigh.

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