voorwerp
English edit
Etymology edit
Dutch voorwerp (“object”), after Hanny's Voorwerp, discovered in 2007 by Dutch schoolteacher Hanny van Arkel.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
voorwerp (plural voorwerps)
- (astronomy) An ionization or light echo, especially the quasar ionization echo known as Hanny's Voorwerp.
- 2014 December 9, Chad Orzel, Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist, Basic Books, →ISBN:
- The voorwerp turns out to be a cloud of gas tens of thousands of light-years across, which has somehow been heated to high enough temperatures to emit visible light. The exact mechanism of the heating is still under debate, but probably […]
- 2018 February 15, Matt Brown, Everything You Know About Space is Wrong, Batsford, →ISBN:
- Other voorwerps have since been spotted, but Hanny holds the distinction of finding the first, with nothing more exotic than a public website and the power of the human brain.
- 2020 April 7, Michael Nielsen, Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, pages 132, 140:
- But regardless of which explanation is correct, or even if some other explanation is needed, the voorwerp is fascinating. Suppose, for instance, that it really is a quasar mirror. As we've seen, this means that the voorwerp is a huge collection of mirrors, echoing the light of the quasar at many different times over the quasar's lifetime. That means light from the voorwerp is a bit like a biography of the quasar, […]
There's even a voorwerp project, and the Zooites have successfully hunted down several more voorwerps. In all, Galaxy Zoo has been used to write 22 scientific papers, on a wide variety of topics, and many more papers are on the way.
Alternative forms edit
Dutch edit
Etymology edit
From voor (“before”) + werpen (“to throw”), a calque of Latin obiectum.
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
voorwerp n (plural voorwerpen, diminutive voorwerpje n)