There's only one organization with the “official" ability to name off-Earth objects and places: The International Astronomical Union (IAU). We put “official" in quotes because these are just the names humans give them—to our knowledge, there is no intergalactically sanctioned authority. The IAU adorns most of what's out there—a lot of stuff—mostly with numeric monikers based on a system that uses prefixes to provide various bits of information about the object in addition to giving it a name. What's popularly known as the Andromeda Galaxy, for example, has two “official" names: M31 and NGC 224. The "M" stands for Messier, signifying that it's included in the catalog begun by Charles Messier in the late 18th/early 19th century. "NGC" is for its name in the New General Catalog. This month, the IAU approved a set of thought-provoking place names on Pluto's moon Charon proposed by NASA's New Horizons team.
But before we get to Pluto's moon, let's spend a little time “on" ours. (That's it. We're all out of quotation marks now.)
Earth moon names
The names for major lunar features come from Giovanni Battista Riccioli, an astronomer in the 1600s. He named observable features—no dark side could yet be seen—using a few themes, including weather (Sea of Rains), states of mind (Sea of Tranquility), historical names, and, to appease the Catholic Church, some saints were thrown in for good measure.
Riccioli's moon map (Credit: Wikipedia)
The original names have been tweaked with designations from modern scientists and space programs, and the dark side of the moon has also been mapped. Some of the new names are IAU-official, and some of the more fun ones are informally used by various nations' space programs as quick shorthand. Who among us wouldn't wish to observe Earthrise standing within NASA's crater Shorty.
Pluto moon names
Here's a list of the new IAU-sanctioned names on Charon. It's quite a group.
1. Argo Chasma
Remember the quest for the Golden Fleece in Greek mythology? When Jason and his crew, the aptly named “Argonauts," departed Iolcos en route for Colchis, the ship they sailed on was the Argo.
(Credit: Sony)
2. Butler Mons
The first science fiction author to win a MacArthur fellowship was Octavia E. Butler in 1995. She wrote a number of cherished books including her Patternist series and Xenogenesis trilogy.
3. Caleuche Chasma
Spooky. The Caleuche is the ghost ship of Chilean mythology reported to sail around the small island of Chiloé in the dark of night. A vessel out of north Chilote mythology, it has several versions and is often considered to be conscious and sentient. Whatever it is, it collects the souls of the dead as its crew on an endless voyage.
4. Clarke Montes
Arthur C. Clarke barely needs an introduction as the author of many well-regarded works of science fiction, including 2001: A Space Odyssey. His metier was space exploration, so he's a natural for Charon.
5. Dorothy Crater
She is definitely not in Kansas anymore. Dorothy Crater is named for the heroine of L. Frank Baum's beloved Wizard of Oz book series.
6. Kubrick Mons
It's a hotly debated film still today—brilliant or boring?—but 2001: A Space Odyssey is nonetheless an inarguable landmark in science-fiction moviemaking and so its genius director, Stanley Kubrick, gets a mountain on Charon. It's not Kubrick's only great film; see Dr. Strangelove.
7. Mandjet Chasma
Another mythical boat is honored on Charon. The Mandjet was the vessel that carried the god Ra —AKA the sun—across the sky each day. At night, the Mesektet reset Ra's location for the next day's journey. Together they were his Atet, sort of the first spaceship.
8. Nasreddin Crater
Nasreddin statue in Bukhara city, Uzbekistan (Photo: Sun_Shine/Shutterstock)
Nasreddin was a Turkish wise man and philosopher who died in 1275-1285 BCE. He eventually became a fictionalized character in countless humorous stories and parables told across the centuries throughout the Middle East, parts of Asia, and southern Europe.
9. Nemo Crater
In Jules' Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island, there was the submarine Nautilus, helmed by the redoubtable Captain Nemo—AKA Prince Dakkar—who's now immortalized in crater form on Charon.
10. Pirx Crater
Stanislaw Lem is a highly regarded sci-fi writer and Pilot Pirx is a character from his Tales of Pirx the Pilot. Pirx is a spaceman, and a space detective, traveling between Earth, Earth's moon, and Mars, though not, it should be noted, out to Pluto.
11. Revati Crater
One of the less well-known characters in the Hindu epic Mahabharata, Revati was a beautiful princess who's generally considered the first fictional character to deal with time travel, way back in 400 BCE.
12. Sadko Crater
'Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom' (Painting: Ilya Repin)
From Russian folklore comes Sadko, a merchant, adventurer, and musician from Novgorod who involuntarily explored the ocean bottom after being forced overboard by his ship's crew. This is part of Bylina, a sung narrative passed down through generations of Eastern Slavs.
Venerable names all
One more name to note: Charon's. The moon was discovered by James Christy in 1978 when the astronomer grew suspicious about Pluto's odd, elongated shape. Or was it really two objects? Well, yes. The moon is just 12,200 miles from Pluto and about half its size. According to NASA, Christy named it for the “mythological ferryman who carried souls across the river Acheron, one of the five mythical rivers that surrounded Pluto's underworld." Also, the first three letters are the same as the first three letters of Christy's wife's. Her name is “Charlene."
A female Pacific blackdragon
A team of marine biologists has discovered 16 species of "ultra-black" fish that absorb more than 99 percent of the light that hits their skin, making them virtually invisible to other deep-sea fish.
The researchers, who published their findings Thursday in Current Biology, caught the species after dropping nets more than 200 meters deep near California's Monterey Bay. At those depths, sunlight fizzles out. That's one reason why many deep-sea species have evolved the ability to illuminate the dark waters through bioluminescence.
But what if deep-sea fish don't want to be spotted? To counter bioluminescence, some species have evolved ultra-black skin that's exceptionally good at absorbing light. Only a few other species are known to possess this strange trait, including birds of paradise and some spiders and butterflies.
The Pacific blackdragon
Credit: Karen Osborn/Smithsonian
When researchers first saw the deep-sea species, it wasn't immediately obvious that their skin was ultra-black. Then, marine biologist Karen Osborn, a co-author on the new paper, noticed something strange about the photos she took of the fish.
"I had tried to take pictures of deep-sea fish before and got nothing but these really horrible pictures, where you can't see any detail," Osborn told Wired. "How is it that I can shine two strobe lights at them and all that light just disappears?"
After examining samples of fish skin under the microscope, the researchers discovered that the fish skin contains a layer of organelles called melanosomes, which contain melanin, the same pigment that gives color to human skin and hair. This layer of melanosomes absorbs most of the light that hits them.
A crested bigscale
Credit: Karen Osborn/Smithsonian
"But what isn't absorbed side-scatters into the layer, and it's absorbed by the neighboring pigments that are all packed right up close to it," Osborn told Wired. "And so what they've done is create this super-efficient, very-little-material system where they can basically build a light trap with just the pigment particles and nothing else."
The result? Strange and terrifying deep-sea species, like the crested bigscale, fangtooth, and Pacific blackdragon, all of which appear in the deep sea as barely more than faint silhouettes.
Pacific viperfish
David Csepp, NMFS/AKFSC/ABL
But interestingly, this unique disappearing trick wasn't passed on to these species by a common ancestor. Rather, they each developed it independently. As such, the different species use their ultra-blackness for different purposes. For example, the threadfin dragonfish only has ultra-black skin during its adolescent years, when it's rather defenseless, as Wired notes.
Other fish—like the oneirodes species, which use bioluminescent lures to bait prey—probably evolved ultra-black skin to avoid reflecting the light their own bodies produce. Meanwhile, species like C. acclinidens only have ultra-black skin around their gut, possibly to hide light of bioluminescent fish they've eaten.
Given that these newly described species are just ones that this team found off the coast of California, there are likely many more, and possibly much darker, ultra-black fish swimming in the deep ocean.
Distrustful dog.
Is humanity's best friend catching on to our shenanigans? Researchers at the University of Vienna discovered that dogs can in certain cases know when people are lying.
The scientists carried out a study with hundreds of dogs to determine to what extent dogs could spot deception. The team's new paper, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, outlined experiments that tested whether dogs, like humans, have some inner sense of how to assess truthfulness.
As the researchers wrote in their paper, "Among non-primates, dogs (Canis familiaris) constitute a particularly interesting case, as their social environment has been shared with humans for at least 14,000 years. For this reason, dogs have been considered as a model species for the comparative investigation of socio-cognitive abilities." The investigation focused specifically on understanding if dogs were "sensitive to some mental or psychological states of humans."
The experiment
The experiments involved 260 dogs, which were made to listen to advice from a human "communicator" whom they did not know. The human told them which one of two bowls had a treat hidden inside by touching it and saying, "Look, this is very good!" If the dogs took the person's advice, they would get the treat.
Once they established the trust of the dogs, the researchers then complicated the experience by letting dogs watch another human that they did not know transfer the treat from one bowl to another. In some cases, the original communicator would also be present to watch but not always.
The findings revealed that half of the dogs did not follow the advice of the communicator if that person was not present when the food was switched to a different bowl. The dogs had a sense that this human could not have known the true location of the treat. Furthermore, two-thirds of the dogs ignored the human's suggestion if she did see the food switch but pointed to the wrong bowl. The dogs figured out the human was lying to them.
Photos of experiments showing the dog, human communicator, and person hiding the treat. Credit: Lucrezia Lonardo et al / Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
"We thought dogs would behave like children under age five and apes, but now we speculate that perhaps dogs can understand when someone is being deceitful," co-author Ludwig Huber from the University of Vienna told New Scientist. "Maybe they think, 'This person has the same knowledge as me, and is nevertheless giving me the wrong [information].' It's possible they could see that as intentionally misleading, which is lying."
This is not the first time such experiments have been carried out. Previously, children under age five, macaques, and chimps were tested in a similar way. It turned out that children and other animals were more likely than dogs to listen to the advice of the liars. Notably, among the dogs, terriers were found to be more like children and apes, more eagerly following false suggestions.
