Astronomers unknowingly dedicated moon craters to Nazis. Will the next historical reckoning be at cosmic level?


June 26, 2020

Science is slowly facing up to its own problems with monuments to its historical figures, even when they are not on earth

The Nazi monuments in question did not, it’s true, receive any visitors. In fact no one on Earth had ever seen them directly, for they are craters on the far side of the moon. One was named in 2005 by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) after the German physicist Philipp Lenard, who won the 1905 Nobel Prize for his research on cathode rays: the “rays” emitted from hot, electrically-charged metal plates, which turned out to be the subatomic particles called electrons. Among other things, the cathode-ray tubes Lenard and others used to study their properties became the central component of televisions.

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/s...t-cosmic-level