top of page

What's in a Name: Acronyms in Science

Writer's picture: Mishkat BhattacharyaMishkat Bhattacharya

It's an unwritten rule in science that to attract funding for a project or organization, or to promote a scientific technique or relevant software among its users, etc., its name has to condense to a catchy acronym.


People spend serious time thinking about these; I myself have been part of such (formal) brainstorming sessions. Over time I have collected some of the acronyms that stood out to me. Hope you find some of them amusing:


  1. ABRACADABRA: A Broadband/Resonant Approach to Cosmic Axion Detection with an Amplifying B-field Ring Apparatus, a project at MIT aimed at detecting Axions.

  2. AMANDA: Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array, a neutrino detector at the South Pole.

  3. AMBER: Astronomical Multi-Beam Recombiner, a telescope.

  4. ATLAS: Australia Telescope Large Area Survey, this is a program.

  5. BICEP: Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization.

  6. BLAST: Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope.

  7. BOOMERANG: Balloon Observations of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics.

  8. BRAINS: Biobehavioral Research Awards for Innovative New Scientists, an award set up by the National Institute of Mental Health.

  9. BREAD: Broadband Reflector Experiment for Axion Detection, a scaled up version of ABRACADABRA.

  10. CANGAROO: Collaboration between Australian and Nippon for a Gamma Ray Observatory.

  11. CAOS: Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.

  12. CIAO: Coronagraphic Imager with Adaptive Optics.

  13. EGRET: Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope.

  14. FAME: Full-sky Astrometric Mapping Explorer.

  15. FLAMES: Fibre Large Array Multi Element Spectrograph.

  16. FLIRT: Fast local infrared thermogenetics.

  17. FORTE: Fast On-orbit Rapid Recording of Transient Events.

  18. FPI: The Future Photon Initiative, an optics center at my university. All emails from the director go out to the 'FPI agents'.

  19. FROG: Frequency Resolved Optical Grating.

  20. GANDALF: Gas AND Absorption Line Fitting, software for spectroscopy. Refers to the Tolkien character from Lord of The Rings, etc.

  21. GLIMPSE: Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire.

  22. HAYSTAC: Haloscope At Yale Sensitive to Axion Cold dark matter.

  23. MAGIC: Media, Arts, Games, Interaction and Creativity center at my university.

  24. MUSTANG: Multiplexed SQUID TES Array at Ninety GHz.

  25. OWL: OverWhelmingly Large Telescope. This has only been proposed, and does not exist.

  26. PATRIOT: Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target, it's the radar component of the famous missile.

  27. QROCODILE: Quantum Resolution-Optimized Cryogenic Observatory for Dark matter Incident at Low Energy.

  28. RABBITT: Reconstruction of Attosecond Beating by Interference of Two-photon Transitions.

  29. SPIDER: Spectral Phase Interferometry for direct electric-field reconstruction.

  30. SQUID: Superconducting Quantum Interference Device, a machine for detecting magnetic fields.

  31. STORM: STochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy.

  32. TRIUMF: TRI-University Meson Facility. Canadian national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, including the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Victoria.

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


Responsible comments are welcome at mb6154@gmail.com. All material is under copyright ©.

© 2023 by Stories from Science. Powered and secured by Wix

bottom of page