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Carpal Tunnel
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From a daily new bulletin I receive: "Superstring theory (sometimes just called string theory) has as its basic premise the belief that the four fundamental forces of nature (gravity, electromagnetism, and strong and weak nuclear forces), as well as all matter are simply different manifestations of a single essence. This essence, the material making up all energy and matter, is thought to consist of tiny (a hundred billion billion times smaller than the nucleus of an atom) vibrating strings that exist in a multi- dimensional (10 or 26 dimensions) hyperspace. The extra dimensions (beyond the ones we recognize: three spatial dimensions and time) are thought to be compactified, or curled up, into tiny pockets inside observable space. The particular vibrations of the strings within this multidimensional hyperspace are thought to correspond to particles that form the basis of everything - all matter and energy - in existence." What, may I ask, is wrong with "compressed" or even "compacted"?  
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What, may I ask, is wrong with "compressed" or even "compacted"?
MaxQ, I agree that it's pretty yucky as a word, but being a physicist, I know that often a word is invented or altered because it takes on a very specific meaning, one which the original word doesn quite work for, or is unclear because there's already a specific physical meaning to the original word. I don't have my nuclear physics books here with me (since I am now in physical oceanography) and googling it just produced a lot of papers by people who obviously already knew what it meant.
It seems to have something to do with compact spaces. I knew this definition of a compact space four years ago when I took a metric spaces class but it's gone now. Anyway, I'm basing this on two lines I found on the web somewhere, if you have a space which isn't compact, and you add an element which makes it compact, then you've compactified it.
Anyway, physics/math people don't follow the same rules everyone else does when making words to describe something new. You kind of get used to it when you're there.
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How about this? A space X is compact if each covering by open sets contains finitely many open sets which cover.You see, this is a slippery slope. I used to know what "covering" means and how you "cover" a space, but no longer. Sorry. If I look that up there will be something else which I need to look up...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Anyway, physics/math people don't follow the same rules everyone else does when making words to describe something new. You kind of get used to it when you're there.
From So Long and Thanks for All the Fish the following seems to match the behaviour you describe:
"I'm afraid I can't comment on the name Rain God at this present
time, and we are calling him an example of a Spontaneous Para-
Causal Meteorological Phenomenon."
"Can you tell us what that means?"
"I'm not altogether sure. Let's be straight here. If we find
something we can't understand we like to call it something you
can't understand, or indeed pronounce. I mean if we just let you
go around calling him a Rain God, then that suggests that you
know something we don't, and I'm afraid we couldn't have that.
"No, first we have to call it something which says it's ours, not
yours, then we set about finding some way of proving it's not
what you said it is, but something we say it is.
"And if it turns out that you're right, you'll still be wrong,
because we will simply call him a ... er `Supernormal ...' - not
paranormal or supernatural because you think you know what those
mean now, no, a `Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer'.
We'll probably want to shove a `Quasi' in there somewhere to
protect ourselves. Rain God! Huh, never heard such nonsense in my
life.
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BTW, I love the Hitchhiker's books and read them about once a year.
But I take issue with this...
If we find something we can't understand we like to call it something you can't understand, or indeed pronounce.
I don't think the superstring guys are unable to understand compact spaces (I mean, I myself understood them somewhat, at one time). They are just using the most accurate word they know of to describe something they observe.
Oceanography example: advecting means something is being dragged along with a current. If you had to write "The current dragged the zooplankton westward" every time you were talking about it, it would quickly become fabulously annoying, plus it sounds like the zooplankton are resisting being dragged (like a dog on a leash), which isn't true, because they just float in the water and follow it wherever it goes. Much better to say "The zooplankton were advected westward with the current." Much more accurate.
I hate it when non-scientists accuse us of using "jargon", because it's only jargon if you don't know the words. Just like the Latin nuts on the Board - I don't think it's jargon when they talk about nominative and other cases, I just accept that I don't understand enough about Latin grammar to follow what they're saying.
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I don't know, Bean. It's one thing to create nouns and verbs by giving definite explainations of what each concept entails, but when one starts creating verbs without any hint of why it's necessary and with no definition, then it just leads to opacitationalization, doesn't it? I don't care who wrote it be it a physicist or a gardener, it's wrong, it's Bushonics. We here don't know that 'jargon' nor does any other person on this planet (those at the end of the universe on the other hand are well enlightened). This word offers no new or further extrapolated meaning; thumbs down.
All knowledge must come before the court of language and be judged.
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Carpal Tunnel
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when one starts creating verbs without any hint of why it's necessary and with no definition, then it just leads to opacitationalization, doesn't it?
They're not talking to us. They're talking to each other. If they know what they're talking about, let them talk any way they please. If you have to take four years worth of courses just to understand the concept they're talking about and then lose a handle on it because you're not involved in it on a day to day basis then the least you can do is let them have their own vocabulary.
As for MaxQ's incisive quote, to wit: Let's be straight here. If we find something we can't understand we like to call it something you can't understand, or indeed pronounce.
This is a very good attitude to have with respect to any myth. If we make a myth too simple we might start to thinking that we understand what's going on. The myth is nothing more than a handle that allows us to relate to an imperfectly understood Reality. If we start thinking that it is understandable we start to thinking that it is the Truth and that anyone who doesn't understand that Truth is somehow of a lower class and therefore to be despised.
And we wouldn't want that, now would we?
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All knowledge must come before the court of language and be judged.It has, but this isn't the court of language for physics or math words. What do you know about compact spaces? It's the people who use the word who accept it or discard it, and they have accepted compactify to mean make compact. To me, to compact (verb) means to squish, which isn't very mathematical, and isn't quite what they mean. So they need to use compactify. And when you make it into a past tense, it becomes compactified. Most standard scientific words, even simple ones, are not in a typical dictionary. For example, in math and science, linearize = to make linear. And I don't mean "make straight" or "straighten out" because linear has a precise definition. You don't want to lose that definition when you turn it into a verb, so linear has to be the base of the verb, and you have linearize. I have tons of other examples which are possibly awkward but are the most compact  way of expressing something: radially (in a radial direction, that is, outward or inward from the centre, as opposed to tangentially), dimensionalize (to make a set of equations dimensional), upwelling (the welling up of water from lower depths to shallower depths), compositing (to make a composite data set), convecting (the act of convection), advecting (the act of advection), insolation (amount of solar radiation)...the list of non-recognized words goes on and on. (This was just from a quick spell-check of my last few term papers.) If everyone in the field uses these words in a certain accepted pattern, with conjugations and pluralizations that are tacitly agreed upon, that makes them words, in much the same way as any other word becomes accepted as a word!
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Pooh-Bah
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I hate it when non-scientists accuse us of using "jargon", because it's only jargon if you don't know the words.
Any specialized occupation has the same problem. Words are used to describe specific, often complex, processes or concepts, and because the words are not part of the everyday lexicon, they are dismissed as jargon. Some occupations seem to have an affection for jargon beyond its usefulness, but I venture that most use the words as the necessary tools that they are.
My father, a mechanic by trade, once launched into a critique of legalese and asked me why lawyers had to make up words so that other people couldn't understand them. I responded by pointing out to him that most of the tools and equipment he used were unfamiliar to me, and that I might as well criticize him for having a specific word for that funny-piece-of-metal-with-a-handle-on-it which non-mechanics did not understand. If he and Geoff got into a discussion of truck engines, it would all go right over my head.
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Not to point fingers here, but if you think us physicist types are bad, just take a look at some of the social science jargon.
Jargon has its place, but if you are addressing an audience with members who are not in your field you must make adjustments or you are not going to be an effective communicator. If a colleague asks me what's happening with the weather he will get a much different, and longer, explanation than my wife would.
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