ultima thule name

Vladimir Solonari, a professor of history who focuses on the Holocaust as well as Russian and Eastern European history at the University of Central Florida disagrees, however. NASA announced Tuesday that the fresh moniker has been approved by the International Astronomical Union, the organization responsible for recognizing the names of space objects and features. The society gave birth the next year to the German Workers’ Party, which Adolf Hitler soon joined and used as the precursor to the Nazi Party. "We believe this ancient body, composed of two distinct lobes that merged into one entity, may harbor answers that contribute to our understanding of the origin of life on Earth," said New Horizons team member Marc Buie. Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. “We wanted to honor Maryland as our mission epicenter, and

Back in 2017, scientists put up a public vote to decide what nickname to give to 2014 MU69, the official name given by the International Astronomical Union. While scientists continue to study the data of the rusty-colored snowman-like object sent back from the spacecraft, Stern is also looking ahead to what other foreign objects New Horizons can visit next.

"That is why we should always wait for the International Astronomical Union to make that final determination on the official names of celestial objects.". Thule was the northernmost part of the habitable ancient world. New Horizons launched in 2006 and famously explored dwarf-planet Pluto before heading deeper into space to visit Arrokoth.

The word means “sky” in the language of the Powhatan people, a Native American tribe indigenous to the Chesapeake Bay region, including Maryland.

Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across), a "medium-sized" moon, formed into a sphere due to self-gravity imposed by its higher mass, An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun in this image taken 10 September, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory. We won’t know exactly what it is until New Horizons’ data can be fully analyzed. If that happens, we'll have to start thinking about possible names all over again. "I'm just a little disappointed because it's just coming out of left field," Stern said. The German Thule Society was an important contributor to the Nazis, and the phrase continues to be used by some neo-Nazi and alt-right groups today. check out Pluto and its retinue of moons (SN: 7/26/15) — is still It was sometimes identified with Iceland or Greenland or, in the late 19th century, Norway. (See Thule culture.)

E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org. NASA. But regardless of the term’s “primary association,” critics say NASA might have reconsidered using a term with present-day currency among neo-Nazis. Ultima Thule: Nasa unveils remarkable picture of the most distant world ever explored, Nasa defends name of distant space object amid Nazi connections, a distant space object after questions over its link to Nazis, Nasa unveil remarkable picture of the most distant world ever explored, a conference to discuss the first results from the flyby, You may not agree with our views, or other users’, but please respond to them respectfully, Swearing, personal abuse, racism, sexism, homophobia and other discriminatory or inciteful language is not acceptable, Do not impersonate other users or reveal private information about third parties, We reserve the right to delete inappropriate posts and ban offending users without notification. On this mission, Kathryn Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to perform a spacewalk and Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space.

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Until Tuesday, Ultima Thule was the informal name NASA used for a small, snowman-shaped object in the Kuiper belt, a desolate region of deep space that the agency said in a statement is home to “thousands of known small icy worlds.”, But that name was not registered with the International Astronomical Union and Minor Planet Center, which has international authority for the naming of objects in the Kuiper belt. Today is National Voter Registration Day! Arrokoth appears as a ruddy deformed snowman in this composite image acquired by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft as it sped past on January 1, 2019. References to ultima Thule in modern literature appear in works by Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the Australian writer Henry place beyond the known world. Mr. Showalter did not respond to a message seeking comment on Tuesday. We delete comments that violate our policy, which we encourage you to read. Questions or comments on this article? January 1 flyby of Arrokoth (SN: 1/2/19) and will continue to do so

The term, which dates back to ancient Greece and Rome, refers to a frigid “place beyond” the lands that the West had explored at the time, and was later co-opted by the Nazis to refer to the mythological birthplace of the Aryan race.

Moving forward, Daniel Batcheldor, the head of aerospace, physics and space sciences at Florida Tech believes scientists should wait until the International Astronomical Union gives the official name to avoid any potential controversy. “To recap: If you know a name has ties to Nazi mythology it is absolutely not acceptable to name your publicly funded research after it, anyway,” wrote FiveThirtyEight science reporter Maggie Koerth-Baker on Twitter. “They named a tank division after Thule in World War II. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by e-mail. We made it easy for you to exercise your right to vote! It also took caviar, ready for the satellite's inhabitants to celebrate the holidays, From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset, Nasa celebrated Black Friday by looking into space instead — sharing pictures of black holes, X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), A false colour image of Cassiopeia A comprised with data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-Ray observatory, The Orion capsule jetted off into space before heading back a few hours later — having proved that it can be used, one day, to carry humans to Mars, This photograph of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank was taken during the Gemini IV mission during orbit no. Today’s neo-Nazis and far-right extremists still use the term. Create a commenting name to join the debate, There are no Independent Premium comments yet - be the first to add your thoughts, There are no comments yet - be the first to add your thoughts.

Ultima Thule is no more. The distant space object is named after an ancient term — that was later co-opted by the Nazis.

March 2018, the The New Horizons team learned about the term’s Nazi connotation during the naming process but decided to move ahead with it anyway, he said. The previous name was a Latin term that metaphorically means “a place beyond the known world.” When it was unveiled last year, NASA said the name was only temporary, but it still attracted criticism because the term has a historical association with the Third Reich. All rights reserved.

been appropriated by the Nazis as the mythical homeland of the Aryan race.

That connection was made in a Newsweek article in March, when the name was first announced, following a public competition. "I sort of thought we might get that question," he said when reporters pressed him on the issue during a conference to discuss the first results from the flyby. “The term, Ultima Thule, which is very old, many centuries old, possibly a thousand years old, is a wonderful meme for exploration, and that’s why we chose it,” Dr. Stern told reporters at the time.

Join us live from @JHUAPL today at 2pm ET as we explore the latest science from the spacecraft: https://t.co/oJKHgKpQjH pic.twitter.com/6IMiS0XGNt.

© Society for Science & the Public 2000–2020. The spacecraft is still out there traveling and studying the Kuiper Belt. Originally nicknamed "Ultima Thule," the snowman-shaped object in the Kuiper belt — the region of the solar system beyond Neptune that contains hundreds of thousands of objects such as asteroids, comets and dwarf planets — is now officially named "Arrokoth," a Native American term meaning "sky" in the Powhatan/Algonquian language, according to NASA's press release Tuesday. visible at night to telescopes.

When it was photographed on New Year’s Day 2019 by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, it was the first object of its kind that planetary scientists had ever gotten to see up close.

So where did the idea for Ultima Thule come from?

So I thought it was aspirational in three different ways and that seemed to me like a home run again.".

But in addition to those older uses, the word has been used by some Nazis to refer to the mystical land where the Aryan race began. Published online November 12, 2019. Ultima Thule, in literature, the furthest possible place in the world.

However, it is also associated with controversy, which is the reason the name has been changed. using the word ‘sky’ completed the trifecta.”. Plus, Showalter himself didn’t choose the name.

Nevertheless, Ultima Thule isn’t the object’s official name—a formal name will need to be proposed to the International Astronomical Union. Vibrant bands of clouds carried by winds that can exceed 400 mph continuously circle the planet's atmosphere, This Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of the young star cluster NGC 346 highlights a heart-shaped cloud of 8 million-degree Celsius gas in the central region.

Its previous, informal name, Ultima Thule, had links to the Third Reich. “The primary association of Thule and Ultima Thule are with travel and exotic places and cold places — it’s associated with travel gear, it’s associated often with distant places in Greenland.”. for at least another year, Stern says.

Follow her on Twitter at @AntoniaJ_11.

names already.

Are you sure you want to mark this comment as inappropriate? In this 1984 photograph of the first untethered spacewalk, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless is in the midst of the first "field" tryout of a nitrogen-propelled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), The spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427 — more commonly known as WR 124 — and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it, Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula - expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago, The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station.