Came across an interesting article in The Economistover the weekend. My love for Star Trek lured me in (the planet Vulcan figures big in that sci fi world) and then the subject matter had me hooked (astronomy is cool, exoplanets even cooler).
But the notion of all of us on our planet Earth stressing out about getting all the names “right” for everything that’s out there seems a little absurd. For starters, there’s simply too much out there to possibly get a name affixed to it all. Secondly, what happens when we stick a name on something, but then the “owners” of that something show up in a spaceship one day and tell us what their home, property, or whatever is really called?
Thinking back to our own Western Civilization history, the geographical names that ultimately “took” were the ones given by the victors.
Will we, not necessarily as a people but instead a planet, always be the victors?
Mandle Medley 