Steven Hawking wants to send tiny 'nanocraft' space probes to Alpha Centauri

Well thats it then no more space left in australia.

It’s so unfair that I can only give you one like for that.

:heart::heart::heart::heart::heart:

1 Like

Uh… my post about the importance of exploring the nearby red dwarf system in proxima centauri was deleted because… discussing how important exploration and eventual colonisation of the same nearby star system mentioned in the article is off topic?

Did anyone see what happened? Was there some kind of flame war tearing down the importance of exploration of the nearby system?

You should have left out that racist screed about “dirty centaurians.”

No? Well, if that wasn’t it… the BBS admins are obviously covering up something big in the proxima centauri system.

2 Likes

Oh, you mean Alpha Centauri! I get his calls all the time!

3 Likes

The nice thing about scientific Greek and Latin is that they can be used to fix meaning. With living languages such as English, or French, lexicographical drift can be a factor.

I have no problems with fixed borrow words for highly specific functions. Taxonomy would be very difficult without that kind of nomenclature. But take the SI prefixes, k, M, G etc. They follow no rule or consistency. They simply have to be memorised. The original system was based on the meaning of names - deca, hecto, kilo - but it then became totally irrational. Even if you know Greek how are you to know that nano (dwarf) is smaller than micro (very small)? Or that tera (monster) is bigger than giga (giant) or mega (very big)? That’s what I mean by “creaking, rusty terminology”. It isn’t at all like naming a worm “necator africanus” where a quick dictionary search will tell you its most likely claim to fame.

It would work just as well to invent words and codify them as to misuse Greek or Latin roots.

I suspect “not interested”. A lot of human history has consisted of us slowly discovering that, far from being the pinnacle of the creation of some deity, we’re really not that important.

Back in 1795, “myria” was a metric prefix, but the word simply means “myriad” in greek. So at the outset, the creators deviated from this proper usage.

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