# Worst named scientific concepts **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 29, 2025, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316 "2025-03-29T19:00:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/81 "2025-03-30T13:32:10Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > doesn’t have quite the same pizazz though. “Horrendous Space Kablooie” has oodles of pizzazz. [![](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/horrendous-space-kablooie.jpg) ](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/horrendous-space-kablooie.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/82 "2025-03-30T13:51:12Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > It didn’t explode. You’re illustrating why it’s a bad name So a bunch of compact, hot stuff **exploded** out into a bunch of cool spread out stuff. That sounds like an explosion to me. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/83 "2025-03-30T13:56:02Z")
It didn’t explode. Putting that verb in bold doesn’t make it true. An explosion would be if high pressure pushed the universe out. That’s not what happened. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/84 "2025-03-30T14:03:16Z")
> [@griffin1977](#): > > So a bunch of compact, hot stuff **exploded** out into a bunch of cool spread out stuff. That sounds like an explosion to me. There wasn’t any “cool spread out stuff” to explode into. There wasn’t anything. Stop trying to use intuition to imagine it, because it just doesn’t work. The chronology of the BIg Bang was developed from our imperfect understanding of quantum physics and is entirely non-intuitive, with no relationship to Wiley Coyote cartoons. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/85 "2025-03-30T14:16:04Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > There wasn’t any “cool spread out stuff” to explode into. We **are** the cool spread out stuff. I meant it exploded, turning from a bunch of compact, hot stuff into a bunch of cool spread out stuff, that’s what exploded means. We are the microbe on a bomb fragment. The diagram in the wiki Cosmic Inflation describes it well, this is an explosion: > **[Cosmic inflation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_inflation#/media/File%3AHistory_of_the_Universe.svg)** > > In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation, is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the very early universe. Following the inflationary period, the universe continued to expand, but at a slower rate. The re-acceleration of this slowing expansion due to dark energy began after the universe was already over 7.7 billion years old (5.4 billion years ago). > Inflation theory was developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with notable contributions b... ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/86 "2025-03-30T14:21:30Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > ‘quantum leap’ - sounds like a big change, rather than just a discontinuous one. “Quantum leap” doesn’t qualify at all for this thread. It is not a scientific term. Keep in mind that “quantum” is the Latin word for some vague amount. When Julius Caesar used quantum he wasn’t talking about atoms or anything. The Physicists use of the term is a much later, secondary meaning. People who use it in its original sense are not “wrong”. My old e-dictionary gives the Physics sense as the _third_ meaning. And “quantum leap” actually does mean a big change and has nothing to do with discontinuity. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/87 "2025-03-30T14:35:49Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > : that few scientific names have lasted since unscientific origins and that AFAIK, the current scientific term is Milky Way in all countries, _not whatever their local traditions produced_. If that’s not true I’d be interested to hear it. The web comic Quantum Vibe depicted that the fourth planet from the sun was colonized primarily by Han from China, and so everyone called it Huoxing. Now I wonder do the westernized names for the planets dominate the international astronomical community, or do non-Europeans still use their language’s astrological names for the planets? (For Europeans the two are one and the same). > [@griffin1977](#): > > the t=0 moment, all other times no matter how soon afterwards are always referred to as “X seconds/milliseconds/femtoseconds after the big bang” I’ve wondered if time extrapolates back like that linearly, or if time is logarithmic and what we would call t=0 really effectively is infinity ago. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/88 "2025-03-30T14:43:28Z")
Gravity waves are waves where the restoring force is gravity - that’s not too bad, even it means that we’re stuck with gravitational wave for the Einstein stuff ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/89 "2025-03-30T14:43:38Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > AFAIK, the current scientific term is Milky Way in all countries, not whatever their local traditions produced. If that’s not true I’d be interested to hear it. Not in Mandarin, for example. Mandarin has a few different terms for the milky way, including one that includes the character for “milk”. But, checking on google scholar, it seems most Chinese papers on the milky way use the term 银河(系) = Silver river (system) ---
**Author:** ![f.coli](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eada6e/32.png) [@f.coli](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/f.coli)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/90 "2025-03-30T15:06:13Z")
Imaginary numbers. Isaac Asimov told an anecdote from his college days. A sociology professor said that mathematicians were “mystics” because they believed in numbers that weren’t real. Asimov argued that they were just as real as “real” numbers. It would have been simpler to make that point if they weren’t called “imaginary”. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/91 "2025-03-30T15:38:35Z")
I was recently rewatching [this Numberphile video](https://youtu.be/snHKEpCv0Hk) in which the presenter opines (at about 3:30) that “trigonometry” is “the worst-named topic in mathematics,” because sine, cosine, etc. are circular functions describing circular motion rather than being fundamentally about triangles. (I’m not sure whether I agree with “worst-named,” but I see his point.) ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/92 "2025-03-30T15:48:45Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I don’t think it is a bad name. Sure, it is not scientifically accurate but “flexion in the fabric of spacetime for a gravitationally collapsed object beyond the Schwarzschild radius” might be a bit much. > > It looks kinda like a hole. It acts kinda like a hole. As a catchy name I think it works ok. I think renaming it would stop a lot of uninformed speculation on the subject, because it is that “catchy name” that invites it in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/93 "2025-03-30T16:06:21Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Cosmologists IME, when they are talking about the big bang they are usually talking about the (ongoing) expansion of the universe from a hotter, denser state. For instance, “Most of the helium-3 and lithium in the Universe was formed during the Big Bang”. It wasn’t at t=0, but it was at a time when the Universe was a lot hotter and denser than it is now. > [@Ludovic](#): > > My current least favorite is the Poynting vector. And then there’s the Killing vector. > [@ftg](#): > > And “quantum leap” actually does mean a big change and has nothing to do with discontinuity. Caesar used the word “quantum”, yes, but “quantum leap” doesn’t come from Caesar. It comes from its use in quantum mechanics. That’s the origin of the term. And in quantum mechanics, what it means is a discontinuous transition. > [@f.coli](#): > > Imaginary numbers. > > Isaac Asimov told an anecdote from his college days. A sociology professor said that mathematicians were “mystics” because they believed in numbers that weren’t real. Asimov argued that they were just as real as “real” numbers. It would have been simpler to make that point if they weren’t called “imaginary”. Oh, yes, I’m a big advocate on this one. I prefer the term “rotational numbers”. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/94 "2025-03-30T17:25:56Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Not in Mandarin, for example. Thanks. Most of the world’s papers were being written in English until the Chinese started catching up. Does that make them a special case, though? [new topic] Einstein’s Theory of Relativity has caused much confusion, not to mention bad jokes about relatives. Even Einstein later said that it should have been named the Theory of Invariants, since the speed of light is an absolute constant and drives everything else. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/95 "2025-03-30T17:33:04Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > What determinism does not mean is that with almost-perfect information, you could make almost-perfect predictions. This is where chaos theory comes in. Good description. Doesn’t really suggest a better name, though. ---
**Author:** ![Tatterdemalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/43a26b/32.png) [@Tatterdemalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tatterdemalion)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/96 "2025-03-30T17:38:04Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Oh, yes, I’m a big advocate on this one. I prefer the term “rotational numbers”. I prefer complex numbers. One of my graduate math courses was called, “Complex Analysis.” It was. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/97 "2025-03-30T17:44:23Z")
> [@Tatterdemalion](#): > > I prefer complex numbers. Techincally, the complex numbers include the real numbers, while “imaginary” refers to numbers that are not real. In the technical, mathematical sense, of course. If we used a different name for the imaginary numbers, would we need a different word for the real numbers also? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/98 "2025-03-30T17:53:29Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Determinism means that if you had perfect information, you could make perfect predictions. This remains true in chaos theory. > > What determinism does not mean is that with almost-perfect information, you could make almost-perfect predictions. This is where chaos theory comes in. The problem with perfect information is that even something as simple as multiplying two undefinable real numbers by each other requires infinite accuracy– effectively, an infinite amount of information and an infinite amount of computation. Yet if the exact product of that (in principle) simple operation determines the path of an if/than branch then you already have an unpredictable outcome. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/99 "2025-03-30T17:57:40Z")
Imaginary numbers and complex numbers are different concepts. An imaginary number is a real number multiplied by i. A complex number is the sum of a real number and an imaginary number. Since zero is real, imaginary numbers are a proper subset of complex numbers, and real numbers are a proper subset of complex numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Topologist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/topologist/32/3208_2.png) [@Topologist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Topologist)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2025, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316/100 "2025-03-30T18:01:16Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Up/Down and top/bottom I can understand. But charm and strange are kind of silly. I’m still mad they renamed truth and beauty as top and bottom. > [@f.coli](#): > > Imaginary numbers. Along those lines: Complex numbers (already mentioned), so named not because they’re complicated, but because they’re made up of (are a _complex_ of) a real and an imaginary number. And irrational numbers: It’s not that they make less sense than the rational numbers, it’s that they can’t be expressed as _ratios_ of integers. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-named-scientific-concepts/1016316.md?page=6)