An alternative to WIMPs are MAssive Compact Halo Objects, MACHOs
The probability of interaction between a nuclei and a particle is called a “barn” - because its a bit like shooting the broad side of a barn.
Its a standard Sci unit, too, so real actual papers will use “megabarn” as a real unit of measure.
Its subunit is called a “shed”, because physicists don’t get out enough.
Barns have physical dimensions of area, even though they are used to express probability distributions. So you can imagine “the broad side of a barn” as being so many square meters, but then scale it way way down to a particle physics equivalent, and you get the barn. Which apparently roughly represents “the broad side of a uranium nucleus”.
I think what annoys me most about "the “sonic hedgehog” example is that it has nothing to do with sound.
There are two wolves in my heart: A meme wolf, and a pedant wolf. Today they fight, and I know not which will win.
They named a spider in Australia “Venomius tomhardyi”
I was recently saying that I bet there’s a dinosaur named after every cast member of Jurassic Park (off the top of my head I only knew there was a Crichtonosaurus). Just to make sure I looked it up and turns out I was correct in the worst possible way. There is a single dinosaur that’s named after the whole cast. Tianchisaurus nedegoapeferima.
Neill, Dern, Goldblum, Attenborough, Peck, Ferrero, Richards, Mazzello
I looked up the sonic hedgehog gene thing cause i was curious to see if that was true and sure enough: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_hedgehog_protein
Science is beautiful. Gotta learn fast.
