Re:Nuclear pasta in neutron stars may be the strongest mater...
by time-of-flight on Saturday September 15, 2018 @02:38PM
(#17995495)
I 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.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Nuclear pasta in neutron stars may be the strongest mater...
by tomjakubowski on Saturday September 15, 2018 @05:00PM
(#17996011)
Naming things is a hard problem for computer programmers, but not for physicists. For them it's all fun!
Re:Nuclear pasta in neutron stars may be the strongest mater...
by greglindahl on Saturday September 15, 2018 @05:55PM
(#17996217)
It'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.
Re:Nuclear pasta in neutron stars may be the strongest mater...
by DiabloD3 on Saturday September 15, 2018 @06:28PM
(#17996328)
WIMPs 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.
Re:Nuclear pasta in neutron stars may be the strongest mater...
by warent on Saturday September 15, 2018 @04:05PM
(#17995815)
I love this. I had absolutely no idea. Thanks for the info!
Re:Nuclear pasta in neutron stars may be the strongest mater...
by andrepd on Saturday September 15, 2018 @05:43PM
(#17996178)
It'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.