Sunday, May 27, 2012

A more convenient designation for earth's most abundant noble gas?

The name "argon" was derived from the Greek αργος "inactive", which refers to its chemical inertness, a property which actually applies to all noble gases. A better term, which would terminologically isolate argon within the family of noble gases would contain a reference to its dominating abundance on earth-like planets in comparison to all other members of the group. Argon accumulates on this type of celestial bodies as a result of the radioactive decay of potassium-40 in the lithosphere. The name in mind is "geon" (Geo (earth + -on (suffix found in names of noble gases other than helium). A second advantage of this alternative term is that it merely differs from the name of the preceding nobel gas, "neon" in having another initial character. Neon is argon's closest brother and the only other "octetophore" chemical relative in the group of so-called "lighter noble gases" (helium, neon, argon) and a term like "geon" would emphasize this.
Of course, one can argue that terminology should also reflect the historical aspect of terminological development as a result of scientific discovery.  And indeed, a good case for this argument surely can be produced. With respect to the name-giving of argon one could argue as follows:  Because it takes quite a while for a suitable, rocky planet to harbour life, let alone intelligent life, "argon" will certainly have accumulated sufficiently enough in its atmosphere to become the most abundant, the most easy and arguably the first of the noble gases to be discovered by that intelligent life. The unawareness of the existance of the other members of the group at the time of the discovery would most likely result in naming the element after its obvious inertness. A term like "geon" would be "anachronistic" in terminological sense since the technology required to establish argon's origin as a product of radioactive decay will always have to be much more advanced than the one existing at the time of the element's discovery. This argument maybe speaks in favour of terminologists who embrace the importance of retaining the historical aspect of terminological development and it certainly is a defendable view-point.
In conclusion, despite the just-mentioned possible criticism on neotermological endeavours, "geon" as an alternative term for "argon" is an interesting proposition in view of its property to localize the element on the periodic table (neon-geon) and the fact that "geon" is the shortest possible term to emphasize a distinguishing feature of the element, something the term "argon" doesn't produce. So instead of being rejected as "terminologcal anachronisms", neoterms could to some extent be a valuable enrichment of the existing "lexical building blocks of science".

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