Affiliation:
1. University of Copenhagen , Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract
Abstract
Surprisingly many of our common words are derived from the astronomical sciences. The planets and other celestial bodies have particular names that reflect their histories and attempts to categorize them. For example, the term ‘asteroid’ was proposed by William Herschel because he thought they looked somewhat like stars. One of the sections deals with the vocabulary associated with the belief in extraterrestrial life, including a ‘cosmic language’ with which all advanced beings in the universe can communicate. The chapter also looks at words such as nebula, galaxy, and Milky Way, and how these have been conceived in the past. The final section is devoted to names of twentieth-century cosmology of which ‘Big Bang’ coined in 1949 is probably the most successful and best known.
Publisher
Oxford University PressOxford
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