George III's planet

The Big Bang Theory is still on and I'm still watching it. It's a terrible show for so many reasons that I won't go in-depth about here. According to a writer for Looper, "the scientific jokes rely on the audience's lack of understanding of the principles behind them." Well, sometimes this show fails on some fairly basic knowledge of science history.

Last night's episode, "The Sales Call Sublimation," gives a perfect example of that. The side story concerns Sheldon and Raj discovering an asteroid and getting to name it. It's a decision they will not take lightly, because Sheldon says that "Sir William Herschel didn't do Uranus any favors." Um, that doesn't sound exactly right.

It is true that William Herschel discovered that planet orbiting farther away than Saturn in 1781. But he named it "Georgium Sidus" in honor of King George III. If there was any doubt that Herschel should be knighted and named Astronomer Royal, that naming choice surely clinched it.

Of course if you know just a tiny bit about 18th century politics, you realize that that name didn't go over that well outside of England. Plus it didn't help that Herschel thought he discovered a comet. The German astronomer Elert Bode was among the first to realize that Herschel had in fact discovered a planet.

Arguing that there should be consistency with the names of the previously discovered planets, Bode eventually convinced the world to call it Uranus. Bode of course wasn't thinking about the potty humor of lazy sitcom writers, and I doubt he'd care if they had chosen to blame him instead of Herschel for that planet's supposedly poor name choice.


Wikipedia shouldn't be anyone's go-to source for anything, but if the writers had bothered to at least skim the Wikipedia article, they would have noticed a section titled "Naming." Maybe they would have had the bad luck to check Wikipedia at a time that particular article was vandalized. Which is unlikely, as Wikipedia's articles on the planets are maintained with almost as much care as the Big Bang articles.

Lastly, a very minor nit: Raj and Sheldon agree to call the asteroid "Amy," after Sheldon's girlfriend Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler (Mayim Bialik). Seems kind of short to be the name of an object there are thousands of in our solar system. Though I don't know how long it would take for the International Astronomical Union to sign off on "00327 Amy" or whatever the final name wound up being.

the scientific jokes rely on the audience’s lack of understanding of the principles behind them

Read More: http://www.looper.com/4809/dumbest-things-big-bang-theory-one-talks/

the scientific jokes rely on the audience’s lack of understanding of the principles behind them.

Read More: http://www.looper.com/4809/dumbest-things-big-bang-theory-one-talks/