See Matt's video at Stand-up Maths: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GyNbLtiAgj4.html Brady's astronomy channel Deep Sky Videos: ru-vid.com
The year: 2718 Prospector: "scans are in from 314159 Mattparker." Mission control: "What are the results?" Prospector: "Mostly just rock. We didn't find anything. No water ice, metals are too scarce to bother with a mining operation." Mission control: "Well, we gave it a go. That's the important part."
Some quick googling finds someone else's analysis 2014 of US death records for the previous 70 years, where approaching 90 million people have over 30 million unique names listed. The same analyst also looked at an October 2010 list of 170 million Facebook names, which had 100 million different names. As of May 2022, there were roughly 1.1 million asteroids either numbered or awaiting numbering. So in terms of asteroids that have been discovered and are in the pipeline to be named, there are many more names available than asteroids in the queue. On the other hand, since anything smaller than Ceres down to rocks about a meter in diameter which orbits within the inner solar system qualifies as an asteroid (and some definitions include some objects in the outer solar system, like the trojans), it seems likely that there are more asteroids than recognised names. On the gripping hand, even just allowing two English words from a basic vocabulary of 20,000 (estimates put a typical vocabulary somewhere in the 15k-50k range) that would be 400 million possible names; taking the "correct horse battery staple" approach using four common words from a 2,000 word vocabulary gives 16 trillion possible names (enough to name every star in thirty galaxies the size of the Milky Way with some left over); 160 quadrillion if you start from a 20k vocabulary. With five words from a 30k vocabulary, you could name every individual grain of sand on Earth. If we really wanted to name every single asteroid, we'd run out of space rocks before running out of character strings...
I was SO MAD when i found out Matt Parker took 314159 for himself. That one should have been simply named Pi, and he should take 314158 for himself. It is appropriately close, but not quite there. THE AUDACITY
Wikipedia: "On 15 August 2024, the main-belt asteroid 314159 Mattparker[a] was named in his honour. The citation highlights Parker's biennial "Pi Day challenges", stating that they have helped to popularise mathematics.[40][41]"
First off, congratulations Matt, what an incredible honor, and well deserved. However I gotta say it would have been a more fitting tribute, or at least funnier, if they'd gone with, say, asteroid 314157.
Actually there is one asteroid that is named after a pet: 2309 Mr. Spock is named after the feline companion of astronomer James Gibson. The cat was so called because he was"imperturbable, logical, intelligent, and had pointed ears".
Asteroid 271828 should be Euler. The IAU really needs to get on fixing that. Alternatively, Asteroid 57721 (gamma) could be Euler... or Mascheroni, if the previous asteroid is named Euler. Not sure if the latter number is unnamed, though.
Looked up the rules and there was nothing against using concepts. Mostly it just demanded you don't pick controversial figures in various ways and no self-naming. Pets are discouraged. Everything else was about the characters length etc. and how to explain it.
The institute responsible for naming asteroids is going to be inundated with requests for naming any of them after Brady. I mean: Asteroid 12345: Bradyharan/Numberphile
"..with a mathematically interesting number". Famously they all are. Proof by contradiction: If boring natural numbers exist, there must be a smallest boring number n. That property would make n interesting. Thus the set of boring numbers is empty.
So "MattParker" now does not only travel on earth to make videos about mathemathics, he literally travels through space... Is there any chance that this "MattParker" will bump into another object like himself in the near future? How about Brady? He could be honored for his achievements in making science popular on the internet. Using a numer in Australian date format would be easy to remember... and the astoroid number 180676 is still unnamed. 🙂
14:45 I think you mean, "the odds of the Earth being mattparkered are pretty slim," now that "mattparkering" is the word for when an asteroid slams into the Earth and destroys all life. So there's a t-shirt
Sooo wrong: everybody knows that mattparker should have been 314158 because unless it’s barely wrong, it can’t bear the name of the famous inventor of the Parker square.
314,159 is also prime. For the record. What about the properly rounded five digit pi, 31,416? Or the properly rounded four digit, 3,142? Second channel content, maybe.
I wonder if any asteroids are named after major Belter characters in The Expanse? Camina Drummer, Naomi Negata, Marco Inaros, etc? Or just the word Beltalowda?
In the 18th century, it was fashionable for men of an intellectual or philosophical bent to have portraits painted wearing a turban like cap. If a full figure painting, this was accompanied by wearing a banyan (loose fitting robe). So it was a status thing.
