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It’s not clear who first called them ‘black holes’, but now more and more of them are being discovered. So the scientific community is need of a term for them – a collective noun for a bunch of black holes. In a welcome move to involve public at large in scientific activities, a bunch of scientists have decided to go for crowdsourcing. Ten candidates have been chosen and votes are invited to pick one of them.
Black holes are in news: Dozens of them have been spotted recently in the neighborhood of nearby stars. (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/science/astronomy-black-hole-ngc6397.html) Moreover, astronomers are working on building a ‘Laser Interferometer Space Antenna’ (LISA) which is expected to sniff out many more of these clusters-of-nothingness hiding here and there in plain sight. What will they be called collectively is a question that cropped up among LISA team members on a Zoom call. [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/science/black-holes-astrophysics-names.html] Cosmic entities are named officially by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), but it has no rules on collectives. So, the team first took the query to Twitter [https://twitter.com/LIGO/status/1398373632431296525] during the NASA celebrations of the ‘Black Hole Week’ (April 12-16). Enthusiasts threw up dozens of suggestions like ‘kitchen sink,’ ‘sock drawer,’ ‘asterisk,’ ‘crush,’ ‘mosh pit,’ ‘silence,’ ‘speckle,’ ‘hive,’ and ‘enigma.’
Finally, the LISA team has whittled the list down to 10, and put it up for a ranked-choice vote. They are: ‘cacophony,’ ‘graveyard,’ ‘horde,’ ‘perforation,’ ‘swarm,’ ‘colloquium,’ ‘disaster,’ ‘sieve,’ ‘brood’ and ‘doom.’
Vote:
https://rankit.vote/vote/xAsSa5YuueVYiWBUglNZ
There’s no hurry – the LISA is not becoming operational before 2034. “So there is time to figure out the term if and when we need it!” says a LISA team member.
Also see:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/name-group-black-holes-crush-b1838141.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/science/black-hole-names-holley-bockelmann.html
Meanwhile, naming individual black holes themselves is another story. The New Scientist reports that the first black hole we have ever directly imaged has been given a name, but the IAU will do its due process before making it official. The black hole, 55 million light years away, has been nicknamed ‘Pōwehi’. It’s a word from the Hawaiian language, and it means “embellished dark source of unending creation.” [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2199578-how-do-you-name-a-black-hole-it-is-actually-pretty-complicated/]
On this, also see:
https://www.space.com/how-to-name-black-holes.html