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TFW you live in a galaxy-spanning super civilization but your planet is dying because its ID in the central database has a UUID collision with another planet 80000 light years away.
Well, the UUIDs for almost everything we use are galaxy-scale already. Astronomers just need to up those random letters a bit.
“Works on my machine”
How difficult would it be for every single thing that can be cataloged and named in the known universe to have a sufficiently unique UUID?
IDK, it’s fun to think about because maybe the 128 bit UUID is still being used due to 40k-like levels of technical debt, and also weird edge cases that cause ID explosion. Like maybe the 4000 year old spec says we need to track micrometeoroids too, sorry.
according to wikipedia, there are about 10⁸⁰ protons in the observable universe
you would need 266 bits to give each one a different number
if you are using base 64, you would need 45 digits
it would look something like this aGVoc3Z4ZnN5YWhkYiByaHNqc2hyIGcgZGhzaGVkaGJz1
Manufacturers of computer monitors be like:
Sony with their headphones be like:
Just slap a number on it we’ll name it when it matters
And then someone decides to name a random planet simply “Steve”
STEEEEEEEVE!
O7
After the generations of repeated offence to the Betelgeusish by earthlings trying to pronounce the native name for their home star, it’s probably for the best.
“I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle”
There are so many objects in the sky that you run out of normal names very quickly.
To be fair, we don’t have any pics of exoplanets. Technically, we could measure their surface temperature and basic chemistry through spectroscoopy but I don’t think they reflect enough photons for our equipment. They are usually identified by dimming their star slightly when passing in front of it. This can give an estimated size and distance from their star. And maybe atmosphere composition if it refracts! So they’re not naming this kind of picture but a bunch of data with big error bars.
Almost resembles an UUID mixed with an IPv6 address.
P4X-639.
In the middle of my backswing?!
Jokes aside, I’m sure there is SOME method for how they name what they find; I highly doubt they just use a random number generator. Does anyone here know what that process is?
Cat walking across keyboards at the wrong time of a group chat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_naming_conventions#Modern_catalogues
It’s based on their coordinates from earth, but the end result is basically what’s in the OP.
Why not Zoidhuirorgerg?
I discovered a new planet! Now I just need to think of a good name for it sets cat down on keyboard
