What's your favorite cool name for a scientific theory or event... like "Occam's Razor" or "Maxwell's Demon"?

[Astoneroad]

Those are a couple of mine... what are some of yours? They can be outdated like "Luminiferous aether" or current like "Oumuamua". Feel free to give a summary or explanation or links to how they got their name.

 

[Jim Taylor]

My favorite term for a scientific event is "Adam's Ban". It refers to the end result of trolls trying to stir up trouble at ASR by using Troll Science.

Troll Science / Troll Physics | Know Your Meme

Troll Science, also known as “Troll Physics”, is a rage comic series illustrating various experiments that are based on faulty understanding of scientific

knowyourmeme.com

 

[mhardy6647]

Well, I don't know offhand about favorite, but, as a connoisseur of the redoubtable RCA Receiving Tube Manuals of yore, and having grown up with a TV repair person for a father, I have a renewed fascination with some of the old TV-era terms such as.

snivets
and
Barkhausen [effect]

https://www.one-electron.com/Archives/RCA/RCA-AppNotes/RCA%201963%20AN-199%20Snivets.pdf

source: https://www.worldradiohistory.com/B...ooks/RCA-Receiving-Tube-Manual-1965-RC-24.pdf (6JB6)
There're one or two others, but I am hypocaffeinated at the moment and they're not leaping to mind.

 

[RayDunzl]

Ill go with

Heat death of the universe

Mostly because we won't need to worry about it for a while.

Or

Sphaghettification

I like sphagetti sometimes, and I think it is on the menu for tonight,, but I always have to wonder why there is an "H" in it.

 

[mhardy6647]

As a profoundly disorganized person, I am pleased to announce that I do more than my share to stave off the heat death of the Universe by locally maximizing entropy to the greatest extent my abilities allow!

Thought of another one I like - as a fan of all things radio: the Heaviside Layer.

image source: https://flemingsbond.com/heavyside-layer/ [sic]

In my own line of work, a fairly important energy-transducing enzyme called aconitase was postulated to employ a mechanism of action that was waggishly dubbed the ferrous wheel. This made a big impression me as an impressionable college sophomore.

A Call For Humor!

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[007Shorty]

I'm a big fan of the Ultraviolet Catastrophe.

Ultraviolet catastrophe - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Also delightful is the fact that by adding a single “n” you get an ultra-violent catastrophe.

My heart leaps for joy

 

[Cogito]

The Panspermia Theory.

"Ray Kurzweil is a prominent futurist who wholeheartedly believes that in the coming decades humanity will experience what he refers to as a technological singularity by which we will learn to transcend biology itself and all the limitations (including death) associated with it. Kurzweil reasons that truly intelligent civilizations (which he believes humanity to be) are destined to evolve into super-intelligent, possibly machine-based beings whose computational powers grow exponentially.

The idea is that once we hit this so-called “singularity” our technology will be so advanced that we’ll be making revolutionary new breakthroughs on practically a daily basis. We’ll be able to harness the power of our own sun in order to accomplish amazing interstellar feats once only dreamed of in science fiction. In this world, things like cyber brains, dyson spheres and teleportation devices aren’t just possible, they’re practically inevitable.

Of course, this theory has plenty of skeptics, including Noam Chomsky, who believes it to be nothing more than a science fiction enthusiast’s dream. While others simply believe we humans will carelessly destroy ourselves before ever reaching the singularity."

 

[olieb]

Von Neumann Universal Constructor
This is the basis of my view of the panspermia idea. An advanced civilization will sooner or later develop self replicating probes to send out to the galaxy as the distances cannot be overcome otherwise.
My idea is, this might already have happenend, billions of years ago.

and
Lichtenberg Figure

Sorry, I forgot
Bistromathics.

 

[kemmler3D]

The Panspermia Theory.

"Ray Kurzweil is a prominent futurist who wholeheartedly believes that in the coming decades humanity will experience what he refers to as a technological singularity by which we will learn to transcend biology itself and all the limitations (including death) associated with it. Kurzweil reasons that truly intelligent civilizations (which he believes humanity to be) are destined to evolve into super-intelligent, possibly machine-based beings whose computational powers grow exponentially.

The idea is that once we hit this so-called “singularity” our technology will be so advanced that we’ll be making revolutionary new breakthroughs on practically a daily basis. We’ll be able to harness the power of our own sun in order to accomplish amazing interstellar feats once only dreamed of in science fiction. In this world, things like cyber brains, dyson spheres and teleportation devices aren’t just possible, they’re practically inevitable.

Of course, this theory has plenty of skeptics, including Noam Chomsky, who believes it to be nothing more than a science fiction enthusiast’s dream. While others simply believe we humans will carelessly destroy ourselves before ever reaching the singularity."

Since you brought up the singularity, I'll say "Roko's basilisk" because I think it sounds very badass, but unfortunately it's not even a real scientific idea, and it happens to be a very stupid idea even aside from being unscientific. It's as if AI proponents (of Kurzweil's stripe, but dumber) somehow convinced themselves Bloody Mary (the children's ghost story) was a real thing and got all scared.

 

[WillBrink]

The recent focus on emergent properties in physics. Such as time, and gravity may not not be fundamental but emergent properties of entropy or quantum level interactions.

 

[Robin L]

Hitchens's Razor:

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence".

 

[-Matt-]

Are we allowed ones from Sci-Fi?

If so, how about the "Infinite Improbability Drive" from Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

Edit: Sorry I missed that we already had "Bistromathics" mentioned above.

 

[Keith_W]

The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

 

[BillH]

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle

 

[Robin L]

Dunning-Kruger Effect: ". . . a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. It was first described by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. Some researchers also include the opposite effect for high performers: their tendency to underestimate their skills. . . "

Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Blumlein 88]

Brandolini's law.

Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage coined in 2013 by Alberto Brandolini, an Italian programmer, that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. The law states:

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

The way this plays out may mean we look forward to the heat death of the universe as entropy will be the only defense against increasing levels of BS.

 

[SIY]

Copper nanotubes, actually written in the literature as CuNTs.

 

[mhardy6647]

Copper nanotubes, actually written in the literature as...

Sounds like a material that should be appearing any day now in cutting edge hifi cables.

 

[suttondesign]

cellular automata

 

[Reddoc]

Poincaré Recurrence Time
Calculated from the entropy of the observable universe (inside de Sitter space)
Mental.
(Honourable mention: Boltzmann brains. Another idea extrapolated ad infinitum)