NASA已將下一個冥王星探測器新地平線號的目標命名為'天涯海角'，那是帶有NAZI意義的神話之地
NASA NAMED ITS NEXT NEW HORIZONS TARGET ULTIMA THULE, A MYTHICAL LAND WITH A NAZI CONNECTION
NASA NAMED ITS NEXT NEW HORIZONS TARGET ULTIMA THULE, A MYTHICAL LAND WITH A NAZI CONNECTION
3/14/18
On Tuesday, NASA announced their temporary nickname for the New Horizon mission’s current target: Ultima Thule. The spacecraft is due to fly past on January 1, 2019, and the team was getting tired of using its official designation, 2014 MU69. There’s just one issue: the name has some unsavory connotations. It was adopted by the forerunners to the Nazi party, and the term remains in use by modern so-called alt-right groups.
Of course, that’s not why the team chose the name, which dates back to fourth century Europe and references a mythological land far to the north, someplace distant and cold, just like 2014 MU69. "I had never heard the term Ultima Thule before we had our naming campaign," Mark Showalter, a planetary astronomer at the SETI Institute and investigator on the New Horizons mission who led the naming process, told Newsweek. "‘Beyond the limits of the known world’—that's such a beautiful metaphor for what we're doing this year."
Showalter said that when he began looking into Ultima Thule as a possible name, he was struck by its long history. As far back as during the late Roman empire, people have applied the term to distant, cold, northern lands—both mythological ones and the real Arctic. Showalter enjoyed its historical romance, like its use on early maps. "I like the idea that it actually comes from a time when cartography and mythology were mixed together," he said. When mapmakers passed the boundaries of what they actually knew existed, "they just started making things up."
That’s not to say the New Horizons team simply ran with the suggestion, which was one of about 34,000 names submitted by an online nomination process. Several of those names were discarded as having been clearly the product of an organized campaign, and Showalter and his colleagues did look into each of the names that became contenders. He said that about 40 people nominated Ultima Thule—many fewer than for the names suggested by ballot-stuffing, but a relatively common suggestion. Ultima Thule and 36 other candidates were then put up for a public vote last November and December.
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