Re: I need advice

Quoting John Cowan <cowan@...>:

> Andreas Johansson scripsit:
>
> > How annoying it is to see a list like this, and find that there is
> exactly
> > _one_ term one does not understand! Aak! What is a "graser"?
>
> Well, I had to go down to Google's 145th reference before I found it:
> there are an awful lot of people in German-speaking countries (plus
> France, Italy, and the U.S.) with that surname.  It seemingly stands
> for "gamma-ray laser", but is not a term used by scientists AFAICT,
> only in fictional contexts.
Well, my excuse for not knowing it rather suggests itself then! :-)

> > > black holes
>
> IIRC these are called "frozen stars" in Russian, because "black hole"
> is a vulgarism in that language.  OTOH, Russian physicists adopted the
> term "boojum" for a certain kind of surface defect (yes, it "softly
> and
> silently vanishes away" under the right conditions) with great
> enthusiasm.
The term "frozen star" has been used in English too. Personally, I've always
had a soft spot for the term "collapsar".

                                                  Amdreas