Speaking to Aliens: The Arecibo Message

On 16th November 1974, a radio message was sent with the objective of being received by aliens. Of course, it would be fairly foolish to send the message in any of our terrestrial languages. So what is the best way to communicate with aliens?

Making it Decipherable

When we transmit communications terrestrially, the transmitters and receivers know how to decode the information. When sending a message to either many or zero alien civilisations, you can't assume they'd use any of the established systems we have here on earth.

Instead, the Arecibo Message alternated its frequency and communicated in binary, a series of either "on" or "off" signals. The message consisted of 1,679 binary signals.

If, like me, you're not a mathematician, that number probably means nothing to you. However, 1,679 is known as a semiprime, meaning that it is the product two prime numbers (numbers only divisible by themselves and one).

The number 1,679 can only be divided by 73 or 23 to give an answer that is a whole number (giving the other number as the result). This means the 1,679 signals can only be arranged rectangular image measuring 23x73 or 73x23.

If you arrange the message as 23x73, it doesn't look like anything and is nonsensical. However, if you arrange it 73x23, the message will display a simple message that aims to tell aliens who we are and what we're all about in the simplest way possible.

Keeping it Short and Simple

The Arecibo Radio Telescope

Since the transmission lasted less than three minutes, there wasn't really much time to tell the whole story of the human race. Instead, the information to transmit was carefully selected in order to "hi" in the most effective way possible:

The decimal system (the numbers from one to ten) was included.

Then the atomic number of the elements that make up our DNA, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorous.

Nucleotides, the molecules that make up our DNA, were then included. With this information,

They then gave them our double-helix structure. At this rate, the aliens basically have a snapshot of our genetic makeup. I guess if they were advanced enough, they could build their own versions of us, if they cared enough.

In case there were any doubts, an image of a stick figure was also included in order to show the aliens where our limbs and head go.

M13, the message's destination.

Since they knew who we were, and supposedly the general area of where the message was coming from, a small map of our solar system was also included which pointed out that we reside on the third planet from the sun.

Finally, a representation of the Arecibo radio telescope was included which signs off the message.

Waiting for an Answer

The Arecibo message will take 25,000 years to reach its destination. If aliens receive and decipher the message, and decide to message back immediately, it'll take another 25,000 years for us to get the answer. I wouldn't wait by the phone and nor will anyone at the Arecibo radio telescope.

In fact, the message was always thought of as a bit of a long shot and only really sent in order to show off what the Arecibo radio telescope was capable of! With that said, I still reckon communicating with alien life is an interesting idea and hope you also did!

Day of the Finnish Language: Part 2

On Wednesday, we celebrated the Day of the Finnish Language with a look at Mikael Agricola, the Finnish clergyman who is considered to be the founder of literary Finnish. While the celebration of the day coincides with the death of Mikael Agricola, it also coincides with the birthday of Elias Lönnrot, a Finnish physician and philologist. We feel a birthday is a much better reason to celebrate than somebody's death.

Sammatti, Elias' birthplace.

Elias Lönnrot was born in 1802 in the Grand Duchy of Finland. He studied his first academic year in the very same place that Agricola was acting bishop. However, the fire of Turku destroyed the university, forcing Lönnrot to move to Helsinki and graduate from the newly established university there which replaced the one in Turku.

He studied medicine and became a district doctor in Kajaani, in eastern Finland. Sadly, he was the only doctor for a population of around 4,000 people who lived across the length and breadth of a wide geographical area.

While his work in medicine seems depressing, it was really his work in linguistics that earned Lönnrot his fame. Lönnrot loved the Finnish language and collected folk tales in the language. He was a founder of the Finnish Literature Society in 1831 and as a result received financial support for his work.

He often took leave from his work as a physician to tour areas of Finland, including Lapland (where Santa lives) and part of Russian Karelia. His travels led to the writing of several books, and he was appointed to the Chair of Finnish Literature at the University of Helsinki thanks to his work preserving Finland's oral traditions.

He worked on the the Finnish-Swedish dictionary between 1866 and 1880, compiling over 200,000 entries in the process. Thanks to his experience with Finnish poetry he was considered a respected figure when it came to the Finnish language. Many of his translations had never been seen before and he coined many of the translations seen in the dictionary. Lönnrot also coined a number of neologisms when it came to scientific terminology with Latin or Greek roots.

Lönnrot's work with Finnish language is the second reason Wednesday was the celebration of the Finnish language. The work conducted by both Agricola and Lönnrot has been incredibly influential in the history of the Finnish language, and that is why Finland celebrated both of these great men in their efforts to preserve their mother tongue.

Part 1 | Part 2

The Greek and Shakespearean Origins of Moons: Part 2

On Wednesday, we questioned a "fact" we'd heard. The fact stipulated that all moons in the Solar System were named after Greek gods, with the exception of Uranus' moons which were named after Shakespearean characters. Whilst it became clear that naming the moons after Greek gods was a fairly common practice, not every moon was named after a Greek god.

We looked at the planets from Mercury to Jupiter on Wednesday, so today we'll continue our search from Saturn onwards. Call us old-fashioned, but we'll also have a look at Pluto, as it was still considered a planet when the moons were being named so it may still follow this rule.

Saturn and its moons.

Saturn

British astronomer John Herschel suggested in 1847 that Saturn's moons be named after mythological characters associated with the Roman god Saturn and his Greek equivalent Cronus, the leader of the Titans who would overthrow his father Uranus until Zeus overthrew him.

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is of course named for the Titans themselves, which were in essence giants. However, when Christiaan Huygens discovered it, it was simply named Saturni Luna (or Luna Saturni), the Latin for "Saturn's moon". This was fortunately changed in accordance with Herschel's nomenclature as there are currently a total 62 moons with confirmed orbits, and if we followed Huygen's method they'd all have boring names.

Rhea is the second largest of Saturn's moons and is named after an actual Titan. Rhea was a daughter of Gaia and Uranus who was referred to as "the mother of the gods", though not all of them. Saturn's third largest moon Iapetus takes its name from another Titan who was the father of Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Menoetius.

The fourth largest, Dione, is named for a Titaness who in one source was suggested to have been a wife of Zeus. Her name is also her title, with Dione having its etymological roots in both the ancient Greek Zeús and the Latin Deus and Diana, all meaning god or goddess.

Tethys, the fifth largest moon of Saturn was an incestuous Titanness, having ruled as an aquatic sea goddess with her brother and husband. To make their incestuous love even more disgusting, she happened to be the mother of all the major rivers of the known world of the time and to roughly three thousands daughters, known as the Oceanids. 

Rhea, Iapetus, Dione, and Thethys were all discovered by the astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who named the moons Sidera Lodoicea, "the stars of Louis" in honour of the French king Louis XIV.

Enceladus shares its name with another of the Titans, the only one that had dragon scales for feet. As Enceladus was discovered and named by Herschel, it would of course follow the nomenclature that he put in place. Mimas certainly follows convention as well, as Mimas was one of Gaia's sons and a Titan. The moon was discovered by Herschel's father, William Herschel.

Whilst these main moons all follow the Greek naming convention in the fact that we are scrutinising, the majority of Saturn's other moons also follow this pattern, with the exception of a few that have boring-sounding scientifically-orientated names, such as the catchy "S/2009 S 1".

Uranus

Uranus is the only planet in the Solar System that has been said not to have moons named after Greek mythology. Instead, Uranus' moons are said to have been named after Shakespearean characters.

Just like Saturn's moon, the names for the moons of Uranus were again decided by John Herschel. Whilst Herschel was adamant that Saturn's moons were to be named for Greek mythology, he insisted that Uranus' moons be named after magical spirits in English literature, not solely Shakespearean characters. The moons Oberon and Titania were named after spirits in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, while the moons Ariel and Umbriel were from Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock, though Ariel is also in Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Whilst Herschel had outlined this nomenclature, only the moons Puck and Mab followed this rule. Both were sprites and Shakespearean characters. Puck appeared in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Mab, or Queen Mab, is from English folklore and was mentioned in Romeo and Juliet.

When Gerard Kuiper, who had the Kuiper Belt named after him, discovered Uranus' fifth moon, he named it Miranda, a character from Shakespeare's The Tempest, rather than following Herschel's rules. However, the International Astronomical Union later agreed that the moons all be named after characters from Shakespeare.

Neptune

The moons of Neptune were decided to all be named after characters in Greek and Roman mythology. Triton, Proteus, Despina, and Thalassa were all children of Poseidon, the Greek equivalent to the Roman Neptune. Other Neptunian moons were named after varieties of Greek water nymphs as Neptune (or Poseidon) was the god of the sea.



An artistic representation of Pluto as seen
from Charon.

Pluto

Though Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet, it still has moons. The names of Pluto's moons have their roots in Greek mythology, albeit the darker side of Greek mythology.

Charon is the ferryman of Hades and the largest of Pluto's moons. Charon is so large in comparison to Pluto that it may be under consideration for dwarf planet status, which would make Pluto and Charon a binary system. Pluto's second moon, Nix is named after the goddess of night who also happened to be the mother of Charon. 

Pluto's third moon, Hydra, is clearly named for the reptilian creature with multiple heads, and Kerberos in Greek mythology is also known as Cerberus, the three-headed dog or "hellhound", the namesake of Pluto's fourth moon. 

Pluto's fifth and final moon, Styx, is named after the river in Greek mythology that separated the realm of the living from that of the dead.

Having looked at all the planets in the Solar System, it's clear that not all moons are named after Greek gods and Shakespearean characters, though many of them are.

The Greek and Shakespearean Origins of Moons: Part 1

Some time ago we had a look at the the astronomical nomenclature and the etymology of the Solar System. However, we came across a piece of trivia that stated that all the moons in the solar system are named after Greek gods, with the exception of Uranus' moons, which are named in accordance with characters from Shakespeare.

We decided to investigate and see just how true this trivia was:

A false-colour image of Mercury

Mercury

The first planet in the solar system has no natural satellites. As a result, is not worthy of our attention today. 

Venus

Like Mercury, Venus doesn't have any natural satellites either, with the exception of 2002 VE68, an asteroid that follows a quasi-orbit around the planet. In the 17th Century, it was reported that Venus did have a moon, which was "discovered" by the astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini. He named this "moon" Neith, after the Egyptian god. Has this discovery held water, the naming convention and our trivia tidbit would have been disproven after only two planets. However, it was not, and as a result, we may be on to something.

Earth

Our home planet, as many people should know. Has one natural satellite, the Moon, which came from Moone,  from the Old English word, mone. This word came from the Old English mōna, which has its origins in the Proto-Germanic  mǣnōn. Whilst none of these are the name of a Greek god, the term Lunar comes from the Latin word Luna, named for a Roman god, and the satellite was at one point even named for Selene, a Greek god.

Whilst this is a tenuous link and hardly seems definitive that all moons in the Solar System are named for Greek gods, we will soldier on regardless to see if our moon was just an exception.

Mars

The Red Planet has only two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Phobos, written in Greek as Φόβος, was indeed a Greek god. Phobos is in fact the Greek god of horror and the embodiment and personification of fear. This is, of course, is the origin of the word phobia.

Deimos, or Δεῖμος, is the Greek god of terror, Phobos' twin, and the second of Mars' moons. Even though both moons are named after twins, the actual satellites are not particularly similar.

Jupiter and the Galilean moons.

Jupiter

The red giant has 67 natural satellites. We covered the Galilean moons in our previous post on the Solar System. The Galilean moons are evidently named after their discoverer Galileo Galilei. Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto are certainly Greek names. It is whether they are Greek gods or not. Io was a priestess of Hera and nymph. Europa, was a god and as you can guess, is the namesake of both the moon and continent. Ganymede was a mortal who was abducted by Zeus, which appeared to be a hobby of his, and became the cupbearer for the gods. He was granted immortality so was sort of a god, despite Homer referring to him as the most beautiful of the mortals. Callisto was also a nymph abducted by Zeus.

Just from the Galilean moons we can see that whilst the names of the moons are all of Greek origin, they are not all technically gods. The next moons were named with Roman numerals until the International Astronomical Union attributed names to the moons V to VIII and established the nomenclature that future moons were to be named after lovers and favourites of the god Jupiter, or Zeus as he was known in Greek mythology. Once it became somewhat clear that Jupiter had a lot of moons, the IAU decided that all moons after XXXIV were to be named after sons and daughters of Zeus or Jupiter.

Closer inspection at each of Jupiter's moons show that even with this nomenclature, not every moon is named after a Greek god or a character from Greek mythology. Take the catchy "S/2000 J 11", which wouldn't take a Greek specialist to realise that it's neither a god nor from mythology.

Clearly our daily trivia doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Despite this, we'll be back on Friday seeing if Saturn has any Greek gods and whether or not Uranus' moons are indeed named after Shakespearean characters.

The Effect Of Latin On The English Language: Part 4

So far in our evaluation of the effect of Latin on the English language, we've seen the paltry linguistic influence of the Romans, the invasions of Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, and finally, the Norman Conquest, which had perhaps the most influential effect on Latin's arrival into the English language.

That said, the conquest isn't the end of our tale. We can't ignore the cultural and linguistic influence of the Catholic Church. From the 6th century, the Church was present in England and would stay as the country's prominent religious organisation for about a millennium. Latin had already begun to take root in the then developing English language through its use in churches across the country.

The title page of Newton's Principia.

Although King Henry VIII would later revoke the Pope's power in the Church in England following a spat with the Catholic Church regarding the denial of the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Latin Mass remained prominent in England up until the twentieth century. Due to the Church and the Norman Conquest, most of the polysyllabic words in English are of Latin or Old French origin.

However, it wasn't just religion that allowed Latin to creep its way into the English language. The sciences and the wealth of Roman technology that was introduced across Europe and parts of Africa led to Latin phraseology entering many languages, not just English.

As we have already mentioned in our previous posts about nomenclature, science, from the Latin word scientia meaning "knowledge", is heavily influenced by Latin. Even by the 17th century, scientists would work and publish their findings in Latin, despite, more often than not, being able to converse with one another in English. It's no surprise that Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica was originally published in Latin in 1687, while it would be another 41 years before it would be published in English, in 1728.

So there we have it. We hope you've enjoyed nearly 2000 years of Latin's effect on the English language. It's difficult to keep it all to just four posts, so if you have anything you think we may have missed, tell us about it in the comments below.

Part 1: The Roman Occupation

Part 2: Anglo-Saxons and Vikings

Part 3: The Norman Conquest

A Brief History Of Astronomical Naming Conventions

A while back we looked at nomenclature and aside from being a really fun word to say, it's incredibly important in the sciences. Given that the scientific community is multicultural, multinational, and above all, multilingual, being able to easily identify things from their names makes incredibly complicated scientific fields a little more manageable.

We've already looked at naming conventions in general, the naming conventions in medicine, and the etymology of the solar system. Unless you still believe that the Earth is the centre of the universe and there is nothing in the vast beyond, you should realise that there are billions of things that need a label.

In modern-day science, the observable universe, unsurprisingly the universe we can observe, is estimated at 93 billion light-years across. Just to clarify, a light-year is the distance covered by light in one year. It takes light only a few seconds to get to the moon and back, and around 8 minutes to reach us from the sun. These figures should give you some idea of how depressingly small and insignificant our planet is.

An infrared image of the Milky Way galaxy.

In the past, the "observable" universe was fairly small and a nomenclature wasn't really necessary. Ancient civilisations often considered these celestial bodies to be gods and it was fairly common for the planets, stars, and anything else they could see, to be named as a god.

Stars that don't have a catalogued name are usually designated using Arabic, as this was the prominent language of early astronomers and the ancient pioneers of the field.

Thanks to advances in technology, the amount of objects we can observe, and therefore need to be named and identified, has increased astronomically (pardon the pun), leaving a nomenclature as the only logical choice.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) regulates this naming convention and provides guidelines for naming newly-discovered objects. Unlike medicine, the system for naming planets and stars is more of a cataloguing system rather than attempting to come up with a system that could account for literally billions of objects.

Thanks to the naming conventions regulated by the IAU, astronomers needn't worry about coming up with clever or redundant names for stars, galaxies, planets, meteors, or asteroids. They can get on with their real jobs, studying them.

An Etymological Voyage Through The Solar System: Part 2

Following the first part of our etymological voyage through the Solar System yesterday, we're continuing our trip through the remaining planets.

Mars

The fourth planet from the sun and our best hope for survival after we've destroyed our current planet. Mars is named after the Roman god of war and protector of agriculture. Though Mars was based on the Greek god Ares, the more popular Latin name would make its way throughout history as the name of the planet. In many Romance languages such as French, Italian, and Spanish, Tuesday is Mars' day.

Jupiter

The largest planet in the Solar System takes its name from the king of the Roman gods. Iuppiter, as the Romans would have us spell it, was in charge of all the other gods and a sky god. The Romans considered him the equivalent to the Greek god Zeus.

Jupiter and its Galilean moons.

Jupiter's Galilean Moons

Jupiter has four moons with interesting names. Though astronomers initally attempted to develop a nomenclature for the moons using Roman numerals by calling them Jupiter I, Jupiter II, Jupiter III, etc, they ended up preferring to name them all after lovers of the Greek god Zeus.

Europa was a woman who would later become the Queen of Crete, Callisto was a nymph and Io was priestess who fell in love with Zeus.

 

Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, which is larger than both the Moon and Mercury, was named for the son of King Tros who was transported to heaven by Jupiter having taken on the form of an eagle. Ganymede is the only of Zeus' lovers to have not been female.

Saturn

Saturn, or Saturnus in Latin, has both a planet and a day named after him. Saturn was the god of the Capitol, and some even considered Jupiter to be the son of Saturn.

Uranus

The unfortunately named Uranus was originally called George's Star, or the Latin name Georgium Sidus after the then king of England, King George III. Several other names were proposed including Neptune, Neptune George III and Neptune Great Britain which were all ignored in favour of naming the planet after the Greek god Οὐρανός (Ouranus), adopting the Latin form, Uranus. We bet you didn't know that the Greeks worshipped Uranus!

Neptune loved a good trident, not to be
confused with a fork, which has 4 tines.

Neptune

Neptune's discoverer, Urbain le Verrier, wished to name the planet after himself. Janus, the two-faced Roman god who had the month of January named after him, and Oceanus, the personification of the World Ocean, a river that surrounded the entire world, were also considered. Both of these names were rejected in favour of the name Neptune, after the Roman god of the seas and brother to both Jupiter and Pluto.

Pluto

Though no longer a planet, as much as we want it to be, Pluto is the last destination on our trip. Once the smallest planet, Pluto is now classified as a dwarf planet and is named after the Greek god of the underworld, Πλούτων (Ploutos). Pluto was sometimes Hades and sometimes used as a nicer version of Hades since the ancient Greeks weren't too fond of him.

If you're wondering about the very odd family ties amongst some of the gods, it should be noted that the Ancient Greeks and Romans would often share gods or even assume that Greek gods exerted their power over Greece whilst the Roman gods would exert their power over Rome.

An Etymological Voyage Through The Solar System: Part 1

If you remember our post on polytheism and the days of the week, then you know that our day-to-day lives are dominated by Latin, Greek and Norse mythology. The same can be said for the night sky.

The route of our linguistic trip.

Traditionally, the shining objects in the night sky were so bright and wondrous that the only thing they could be were deities. Thus several of the brightest objects, which also tend to be the closest, were named as gods, which has stuck with us to this day. Today and tomorrow we'll be travelling through the linguistic past and etymology of the Solar System and the gods who share their names. Let's start at the centre with...

The Sun

The name for the brightest star in our sky, at least during the day, came from the Old English Sunne via the Germanic Pagan god, Sól or Sunna. The Latin name for the sun, Sol, is where we get the name Solar System.

Mercury

The first planet in our solar system is named for the Roman god of the same name. Though Mercurius, to use his Latin name, was the guide for souls on their way to the underworld, he also dabbled in being the god of financial gain, poetry, eloquence, luck, fortune and thievery. A real jack-of-all-trades. Just watch him whizzing around the night sky. He certainly keeps himself busy.

There's a reason Venus is the goddess of beauty.

Venus

The goddess of love and the brightest object in the night sky, Venus was the epitome of beauty and pretty much the most powerful sex symbol in human history. She also represented fertility and prosperity, which anyone who has children will tell you are complete opposites.

Earth

Our home planet, also known as Terra and Gaia. The word earth in reference to the soil and ground is lower case but should remain capitalised as Earth when referring to the planet, at least in English. Terra, the Latin name for the planet, gives us derivatives such as terrestrial, which most of us should be, and extraterrestrial for those not from earth, as in our short mate with the glowing finger, E.T.

The name Gaia refers to the Greek goddess of the Earth and is often used when referring to the planet as a spiritual living being. If you're thinking about leaving the office, growing your hair and making flower necklaces, get ready to start hearing your new friends call the planet Gaia.

Selenic...

The Moon

A moon is technically a natural satellite, something that orbits a planet but wasn't put up there by us. The Moon is the closest object to Earth and thus, follows the same rules on capitalisation as Earth. In lower case, moon should refer to a natural satellite, while upper case Moon should refer to our moon, or Luna, as she is also called.

The word moon came from moone, which has its roots in the Old English word mōna. Its Latin name, Luna, gives us, much like the Sun and the Earth, the adjective lunar. The less common Ancient Greek word selenic, another adjective, may also be used. Selenic comes from the Ancient Greek name for the Moon, Selene, or Σελήνη when using the Greek alphabet.

Tomorrow we'll pick up where we left off as it's time for a rest stop. We've covered almost 250,000,000 km and we need to use the bathroom. Next stop, Mars!

The Language of Medicine: National Doctors' Day

In the US, today is National Doctors' Day and though we know very little about medicine, we like to think we know quite a bit about language.

A few weeks ago we had a look at binomial nomenclature and how convention dictated that when it came to naming life, Greek and Latin were the languages of choice. The same can be said for medicine as frankly every science has a bit of a love affair with the classical languages.

E. coli magnified 10,000 times.

When it comes to bacteria, Greek is the preferred language. One of the most commonly known bacteria, Escherichia coli, or simply E. coli, takes its name from Greek. Genes, however, are a lot more complicated when it comes to naming.

The Terminologia Anatomica (TA) is the naming convention used when it comes to the human body. It has a good number of rules, as well as 16 subsections ranging from general anatomy to bones, joints, muscles, and various systems of the human body.

Prior to the Terminologia Anatomica there was the Nomina Anatomica (NA), another set of international standards used until the TA usurped it. Prior to the NA pretty much everything was named following vernacular translations from Greek and Latin leaving around 50,000 terms, which was clearly far too many.

The NA addressed this issue by setting up standards for nomenclature. After the NA was applied, the number of terms was reduced to 5,528, which is obviously much easier to work with on an international level.

Once the TA was set up in 1998, it was adopted as the international standard. Since the TA is only available in three languages many places still use the NA since the TA is not available in their mother tongue.

Naming Life in Greek and Latin

If you've ever studied any of the sciences, you've likely noticed that most words in science are of Greek or Latin origin. This is especially true in biology, where a system exists for naming things in Latin.

Most sciences have borrowed their names from either Greek or Latin and biology is no exception. The word βιος (bios) in Ancient Greek means "life" and λογος (logos) means "the study of", which gives us "the study of life". Even the word etymology came from the Ancient Greek ἐτυμολογία (etumologia).

As you probably know, there are billions of living things on this planet, though not so many on the other planets in our Solar System. When it comes to naming them, numbers, as most linguists will agree, are too boring. So what can you do? Create a system.

What an impressive pinus erectus...
Actual name Pinus ponderosa.

Binomial Nomenclature

Binomial nomenclature, the convention used to name pretty much every living thing using only two words, is not only common in Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons but in real life too. Before binomial nomenclature, species were named using polynomial nomenclature, which used many words for naming things. It was useful for descriptions but not great at getting a point across quickly. The binomial system was simpler and gave things a unique identifier instead of giving too much information about them.

There were so many wonderful benefits to only using two words. Firstly, it's cheaper to print the names (if you're on a budget) and it also makes everything a lot easier to remember. It also helps maintain a standard across the world. It would be great if everyone could speak every language, but this isn't the case and scientists know it.

Though Latin and Classical Greek are the preferred languages when it comes to naming animals, there are a few exceptions. Big-headed scientists occasionally break the rules and name something after themselves or even put jokes in them, though don't expect them to be side-splittingly funny, they are biologists after all! Needless to say, Rubus cockburnianus is a strong contender for our favourite.