Every once in a while you come across a website that renews your faith in the Internet. The Dumb Or Overly Forced Astronomical Acronyms Site (or DOOFAAS) site has done just that by listing a whopping 427 dodgy acronyms dreamt up by astronomers.
Classics include the bonzer CANGAROO (Collaboration between Australian and Nippon for a Gamma Ray Observatory in the Outback) and the expletive GADZOOKS! (Gadolinium Antineutrino Detector Zealously Outperforming Old Kamiokande, Super!).
Sticky tape holds a special place in the history of science because it was used by Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov to isolate freestanding graphene – winning the University of Manchester physicists a Nobel prize a few years back.
It turns out that sticky tape itself has long fascinated physicists, as Ryan Mandelbaum explains in Gizmodo. Scientists are particularly interested in how tape peels away from a surface, which is a surprisingly complicated process to explain theoretically.
In April astronomers and astrophysicists unveiled the first-ever up-close images of the region surrounding a black hole. Now, the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (which played an important role in acquiring the images) has put together a quiz to “Test your black hole brilliance” about the images and how they were acquired.
