Free form: Blog 8, FERMI (or Frequently Estimated Ridiculous Measuring Inquiries)

This week we learned a lot about dark matter and the mysteries of the universe. These mysteries often have complicated, difficult to remember names. In order to make everyone's lives easier, astronomers often assign acronyms to the objects they discover. This week we have seen some very interesting ones: MAssive Compact Halo Objects (MACHOs) and Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) have invoked some terrific mental pictures of body-building contests. Additionally, we use OGLE (Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment) to look for MACHOs. The acronyms get more and more far fetched the further you delve into astronomy. A quick google search on my part easily resulted in multiple articles discussing the ridiculous nature of some astronomy acronyms. There is even a blog dedicated to this topic named Dumb Or Overly Forced Astronomy Acronyms Site (DOOFAAS). BeforeI get to the point of this blog post, I would like to share some of my favorite acronyms that I came across in my research:

ARMPIT	ASKAP Rotation Measure and Polarisation InvestigaTion
BICEP	Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization
BOOMERanG	Balloon Observations Of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics
COYOTES	Coordinated Observations of Young ObjecTs from Earthbound Sites
FaNTOmM	Fabry-perot of New Technology for the Observatoire du mont Megantic
GADZOOKS!	Gadolinium Antineutrino Detector Zealously Outperforming Old Kamiokande, Super!
MAMBO	MAx-planck-Millimeter-BOlometer
PINOCCHIO	PINpointing Orbit-Crossing Collapsed HIerarchial Objects
POOPSY	Phase One Observing Proposal SYstem
SiEGMuND	Simulation of Events with Geant for Muon and Neutrino Detectors
TANGOinPARIS	Testing Astroparticle with the New Gev/tev Observations Positrons And electRons : Identifying the Sources
WOMBAT	Wavelength-Oriented Microwave Background Analysis Team

That's hardly all of them. There is still MAGIC (MajorAtmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov Telescopes), GANDALF (Gas and Absorption LineFitting), MERLIN (Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network), ARISTOTELES: Applications and Research Involving Space TechnologiesObserving the Earth's field from Low Earth orbiting Satellite, CANGAROO: Collaboration between Australian and Nippon for a GammaRay Observatory in the Outback. 

Some, I can't believe were approved. For example WISEASS (Weizmann Institute of Science Experimental Astrophysics Spectroscopy System). Here is a link to prove it's real. And SHIT (Super Huge Interferometric Telescope). Here is the link for that one.

Ok, I have had enough fun. Now to the point of the blog post. I would like to propose a Fermi problem: How many acronyms can astronomers possibly make?

Ok, so astronomers have already exceeded my expectations. This blog already has about 400 entries. By estimating from the first thirty or so, the average acronym is 5 letters long. With 26 letters, we can approximate the possible number of letter combinations: \[ 26 \times 26 \times 26 \times 26 \times 26 = 26^5 = 1.2 \times 10^7 \] For a fermi problem this really means our answer is \(10^7\).


We can assume that not all of these combinations make actual words. For example, AAAAA doesn't mean anything to us. I am going to guess that about 10% of combinations make words, in any language that uses our alphabet. But most astronomy happens in English, so I am going to guess that about 10% of those combinations, could be words in English. Therefore, 1% of the words we calculated could make acronyms in English. \[ \frac{10^7}{100} = \boxed{10^5 \: acronyms } \] This is most likely a overestimate, but I am going to keep it because I didn't count the acronyms with numbers (e.g. 5MUSES) or in other languages (e.g. ALMA). 

So how does my answer compare? According to the internet, there are \(2 \times 10^5 \) words in the English dictionary, which means that astronomers can make acronyms of about half the words in the dictionary. They better get cracking on that. Good thing there are nearly infinite things to discover in outer space.

Sources:
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~gpetitpas/Links/Astroacro.html
http://space.io9.com/an-alphabet-soup-of-absurd-astronomy-acronyms-1613063426
http://www.space.com/28244-strange-astronomy-acronyms.html