Should Bottom Quarks Taste Like Uranus?
Happy Pride! Four Things I Would Do (As A Writer) To Change Science Terminology
Hi Folks!
As with many queer and trans writers and performers, Pride Month is usually a busy stretch for me. This month even more so, as Light From Uncommon Stars has been released and my writing has reached audiences far beyond anything I’ve experienced (thank you!!!) .
This past Monday, I was part of an Instagram Pride Chat to discuss queer history, contemporary icons, and the community. This weekend, I am off to the American Library Association Conference later this week to attend the Stonewall Book Awards Ceremony and to chat about science fiction and fantasy and how it impacts reality.
I was thrilled to join a Pride Month celebration with some of my favorite #Bulletin writers – @ericcervini, @gerrickkennedy, @gregmania and @oureric – thank you for an enriching conversation.
Most of these chats start with science fictions, fantasies, world-buildings and all the other good stuff I get to do in a novel—then talk about the role of community throughout.
So, I thought I would turn that around this week. I’d like to start with queer community, then move to how it might inspire a few changes in the science world, if I could make my fictions real.
✨
Ryka
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Four Things I Would do (as a Writer) to Change Science Terminology
1. Change the name of Uranus. Because Your Anus.
Part of responding to name-calling is just how exhausted it makes you. I just wonder how much time has been wasted…and how many scientists and teachers needed to pause to prepare themselves for the giggles and expectations every time this this planet is mentioned.
When you are queer, name-calling comes with the territory. Why? Perhaps some people have an anxiety have about queer folk—possibly springing from doubts of their identities and fears of being weak.
People also have an anxiety have about things scientific—possibly springing from doubts of their own educations, and fears of being ignorant.
And so, it is not surprising how often people are willing to snicker and make dumb jokes than face the unknown.
Now, some things about this name are fitting. Uranus is a planet that was knocked on its side, with a core that no longer generates heat—wonderfully apt for an ancient sky god who was literally overthrown and castrated.
(Note there is no video on "How to Pronounce Neptune")
But who really wants to hold a press conference and announce an initiative to probe your anus?
What is so weird about Uranus is that it’s an oddball name. Every other planet has a Roman name, but Uranus is a Greek name (again, insert jokes here). The Roman name, Caelus (literally where we get “celestial” and “ceiling” from), would have been fine.
There may be later jokes about Caelus and Cialis, but that would not be close to the level of your anus jokes.
So, Caelus it is.
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2. Sure. Pluto is a Planet. Have All the Planets You Want.
Again, the unknown is a scary thing. I think this is why people cling SO hard to “Pluto is a Planet.” It is the way they learned it, and people resist change.
In this case, I would shrug and say, “why not?”
There is a sense that in the old days, planets were easy—they were biggish round things that weren’t moons of other planets. Bonus points if the round things had moons of their own.
Pluto is biggish. Pluto is round. Pluto even has moons. Simple, right? What screwed everything up?
Astronomers discovered other Pluto-like objects out there. And suddenly—how many planets are too many?
This is something queer folk have been dealing with, as well.
(Gay. Gay and Lesbian. GLBT. LGBT. LGBTIQ. LGBIQIA+. And so on.)
Definitions work—until they don’t. Gay works until you find Lesbians. Gay, straight, and bisexual are fine until one realizes there are nonbinary identities. And so on.
So, fine. Keep them. What harm is there? Ten planets, twenty planets—how does the actual science change?
I think that much of this back and forth was because scientists like a little excitement and news in their lives—but at some point, don’t these digressions become distractions?
My feeling? Having a few more planets doesn’t make the existing ones any less special. Bisexuality is not invalidated by nonbinary identities—there are just more identities available.
By the way, if we were on Jupiter, would we even consider Earth a planet, or would we just limit “planet” to the gas and ice giants?
After all, one can argue that Earth has more in common with Ceres than it does with Saturn. From Jupiter’s perspective, Earth and the rest of the terrestrial planets would likely classed as “major asteroids.”
So, Pluto a planet? Why argue? Let’s go to “big round things that aren’t moons” and proceed from there.
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3. Free Cladistics from Linnean Taxonomy. Sometimes Life Isn’t that Simple.
DNA research disrupted taxonomy the same way that telescopes disrupted astronomy. Both allowed us to see things we could never see before, giving a deeper understanding of how the world that flat-out disproved previous ideas.
In astronomy, Ptolemy looked at the sky, saw the sun and moon and stars sail overhead, and determined we were in the center of it all. Ptolemy wasn’t being silly; his geocentric model made sense to the best observations he could make. Ptolemy’s geocentric model was so good that it predicted the motions of the heavens better than the first heliocentric models—in other words, it did better than the models that were closer to the truth.
But then, Galileo Galilei, then Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe, used telescopes to peer into the sky and place the Earth in an elliptical orbit around the sun. So direct was this evidence that any future talk of Ptolemy and geocentrism was limited to pseudoscience and history books.
Meanwhile, in biology, Carl Linnaeus did the best he could to classify life. And, like Ptolemy, he created something amazing. The Tree of Life—the concept of hierarchical classifications from kingdoms and orders to genus and species—is from Carl Linnaeus.
However, DNA analysis grants us two tools that were unavailable to Linnaeus: first, DNA sequencing itself, and second, the molecular clock, which predicts the rate at which DNA changes over time.
With these tools, we can sequence different organisms, and estimate the time since their last common ancestor. The more alike the DNA, the more recent the ancestor.
The resulting classification system, Cladistics, has revealed some surprising relations. Snakes are lizards. Birds are reptiles. And all of us are fish, because all vertebrates are more closely related to some fish than those fish are related to other fish.
These surprises, though, only happen because when we are clinging to Linnean Taxonomy. Most biologists have moved to cladistics, but some still linger—and much of the public still clings to Linnaean classification.
But I would speed up the process, not just because Ptolemy, but because replacing outmoded biological models and beliefs has a special place for queer people. Because who hasn’t heard the argument that queers are unnatural because every other animal has boys and girls?
Because that is wrong. And because the life is diverse. And because not recognizing this can blind us to appreciating how creative and inventive life is.
So, in my worldbuilding, I would relegate Linnaean Taxonomy to the same place as the Ptolemy's Geocentric Universe. With historical interest and respect—but being clearly outdated.
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4. Rename Quark Types Because All Quarks Can Be Charming.
I think of the quark. All good? I think most of us are good with quarks—they make up protons and neutrons and stuff. Got it.
BUT did you know quarks have flavors? But not chocolate or vanilla.
Rather—up and down, top and bottom, and charm and strange.
How is bottom a flavor? (Never mind. See Uranus.)
Words can be misleading, especially when these words have so many familiar meanings. We can waste time feeling sorry for strange quarks, because they can be charming, too, if up quarks always have the higher ground, or if top quarks really are good at being tops.
There was even a move to name two flavors of quarks “truth” and “beauty.”
As a poet, I don’t throw words like “truth” and “beauty” around without being clear about it. Speaking of unclear, a physicist said that “Top and Bottom” were a logical pair for “Up and Down.”
Excuse me?
This is Pride month, and “Top and Bottom” are the logical pair for each other.
"Quark" might be a funny name, but since its primary meaning is the particle (yes, the word was used in James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, but Joyce used lots of words in Finnegan's Wake) , we don’t need to filter out all other uses of the term to have a focused conversation.
I think most of us understand the dangers of anthropomorphizing—of giving animals, even natural processes, human personalities, and motivations. But one can risks anthropomorphizing their surroundings, by giving unfamiliar objects and processes overly familiar names.
The unknown can make people anxious, and people will want to see the familiar—even now, searching for Mars looking for faces and doors and worms and peas and crabs.
Imagine if scientists really called these features doors or faces or worms or peas or crabs? Except that Martian faces and worms were geological, as opposed to the names of living organisms?
Attention-getting? Of course! But just thinking of the ensuing confusion gives me a headache.
We discover all sort of new things, and usually it’s better to create new words for them.
Anyway, there are more items I can list, for sure, but it’s getting late, and I need to start packing! Chat soon—about librarians this time for real!
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