Essential linkage: Oxford University Press lists words that real science has nicked from sci-fi authors.
The bloggers over at Oxford University Press have put on their thinking caps and come up with an intriguing little list. Real science has often taken inspiration from the make beleive world of science fiction, but OUP has gone a step further and found a list of words and terms that science has adopted wholesale from the pages of EE Doc Smith, Isaac Asimov and other sci-fi luminaries.
4. Deep space. One of the other defining features of outer space is its essential emptiness. In science fiction, this phrase most commonly refers to a region of empty space between stars or that is remote from the home world. E. E. "Doc" Smith seems to have coined this phrase in 1934. The more common use in the sciences refers to the region of space outside of the Earth's atmosphere.
See? You're not wasting your life with science fiction! Check the blog out for the other nine entries - what SF nomenclature are you waiting to see hit the mainstream?
Issue: 133 | February, 2012