Dear NASA,
Christmas is quickly approaching and, as per usual, I’ve left most of my gift shopping to the last minute. Waiting until the last minute is generally considered a recipe for disaster. Last minute shopping means fighting for parking in overcrowded malls and making purchases that are ultimately crap. You know your gift is crap and your intended recipient knows your gift is crap. I’ve countered the social stigma of a crap gift by deliberately purchasing bad presents for most of my loved ones. This means their expectations through the years have become significantly lower, and they likely attribute my poor gift giving to some sort of developmental disorder…which isn’t entirely inaccurate.
Anyhoo, there are loved ones who are exceptions to my above deceptions…ie the ones I actually love. My dad falls into this category, and he’s something of a black hole enthusiast. I had the rather grand idea of having a black hole named after him…you know, in the way that stars can be named after someone for a nominal fee. But after a bit of research (not too much as my schedule is taken up with an awful lot of television watching) I’ve discovered that you can’t actually have a black hole named after someone. As I understand it, black holes really aren’t named at all. Rather they are given an alpha-numeric catalog number or something. Furthermore, it seems the star naming thing is a bit of scam (which only makes me more interested in going into the star naming business but that’s neither here nor there). Even if I could have a black hole named after my dad he’d likely be more upset that I’d been swindled than happy that there was a piece of universe named in his honor.
But then I had a rather brilliant idea! You see, my dad’s last name is Berna and at some point in college he was given the nickname Bunsen. It’s a play on words. Bunsen Berna…as opposed to Bunsen burner. Isn’t that clever? Just a bit of science humor. See, we’re all friends here. Anyhoo, I was wondering if the space community could sort of agree to refer to a black hole (any one of them really) as The Bunsen. It could be a nickname of sorts…nothing you’d see in scientific journals, but just a name you’d toss around the office. Like, “Hey, Marty. Did you see the images we got back on The Bunsen? Out of this world!” Or, “Looks like there’s some unusual activity going on around The Bunsen.” These are just examples. No one would have to use those sentences exactly.
Ideally, I’d like for you to communicate your agreement to my proposal on formal NASA letterhead. But I understand that letterhead ain’t cheap…especially if the NASA bit is embossed or something. So, an email acknowledgment would totally suffice. This way, I can provide my dad with evidence of my attempts to secure a black hole as his informal Bunsen Berna namesake.
Anyway, if you could get back to me before Christmas that would be “stellar.”
Sincerely,
