Seeking scientific tattoos

July 9, 2008 7:17 PM

Help me choose a physics/astronomy-related design for a tattoo.

I'm looking to get some ink soon, and I want it to reflect my passion for physics/astronomy. I am aware of Carl Zimmer's blog, but many of the tattoos there are biology/chemistry/mathematics-oriented. I've considered the astronomical symbol for Pluto or a Feynman diagram but want to explore other options I may have overlooked. Any astrophysicists (with or without tattoos) out there with ideas? I'm not a scientist, so don't assume I have prior knowledge of the more esoteric subjects in the field.

posted by nightengine to science & nature (18 comments total)

Maybe a bubble chamber plot? Those are science-y but still artistic. The Strokes used one as an album cover.
posted by smackfu at 7:30 PM on July 9, 2008

Astrolabe , a wheel in a wheel , way up in the middle of the air. Lots of examples to work with there.
posted by Agamenticus at 7:46 PM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm telling you one of my best tattoo ideas:

F=ma on your fists, you know, like the love/hate thing
posted by Loto at 7:47 PM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Some model of the atom would be interesting but maybe too cliche. I always found Mobius strips entertaining and even considered getting a tattoo of one myself but might be a bit too mathematical.
posted by the_dude at 8:29 PM on July 9, 2008

you should get the "map to the sun relative to some pulsars and the galactic center" part of the design imprinted on the plaque that's attached to the side of the pioneer 10 & 11 spacecraft. it's the "starburst" looking part.
posted by sergeant sandwich at 8:40 PM on July 9, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

part of the Arecibo message maybe? That's what I did.
posted by xbonesgt at 9:22 PM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Getting a tattoo is something people are often apprehensive about, because in a sense it's "permanent". Some marking is likely to remain with you a long time. That said, they're done on an incredibly unstable canvas. I had to look up just now how they stay in place at all. While it's pretty remarkable, they ink still bleeds, loses definition, warp as your skin wrinkles, and eventually fall apart completely.

I've long thought about getting a tattoo whose message was about the curious medium, sort of mcluhan-esque. The tattoo on it's own would not have any meaning outside the context... but would say something about the "canvas" itself, not to mention prompt you to think about the canvas.

I'd get a tattoo of as perfect a square as I could, somewhere I'd see it every day.

A square is simple, but rarely seen in nature. If I draw a square on a piece of paper, then curl that piece of paper, or tilt it away from perfect perpendicularity with your vision... you still see the square. May different raw perceptions - tiles in a bathroom, grid paper, scrabble tiles, oscilloscope reticules - will be perceived at some level as "square". A "square" tattoo won't start out being truly square, as no part of your body is truly flat. As you age, it will grow less and less square like. But it will still be seen as a square.

There really isn't such a thing as a perfect square (or any geometric figure, for that matter). They are abstractions. Science is the highest form of one of the most basic human activities - forming mental models of how the world works. From light dappling on our retina and the myriad signals that make up proprioception, we come up with the core models of our world - euclidean geometry (hello, square) and the idea of movement. These are things so implicit children have a sense of them out within a few weeks of life. From there we form all sorts of incredibly complicated models... physical theories, conceptions of how our friends feel, my current mental log of where I think my possessions are, social theory, the narratives we tell ourselves about our lives, and so forth.

These models are extremely important. We couldn't even basically function without them, and they are how we make predictions about (and gain understanding, to various degrees, about) our world. At the end of the day though, they're in our heads. They aren't reality. We see this when we misjudge our friend's feelings, when the machine we built blows up, when we trip in the dark, or when our Grand Unified Theory is invalidated by experiment. The defining characteristic of the scientific attitude is a willingness to question our models. It also seems to be what we find so endearing about children, and so infuriating about fundamentalists of all kinds.

So, back to our square. The square is a good representative of our most primitive abstract model - geometry. It's "obvious" within the model, and yet you're kind of suprised to see one on a big lump of flesh. In clashes with our experience... squares are not (often) naturally occuring. The square is a reminder of the beauty of our models, but also that they are a different thing entirely than the real world... and our perception of it.

Nothing lasts... it's all fleeting, but this is hard to remember. It could be sort of a momento mori, watching your square fall apart. It's hard to remember that we're in a state of constant flux because we don't often have a point of reference. But we have our model of the ideal square. We can watch as this new feature of our body deviates from it.

There is probably a metaphor to be seen insofar as one's conceptions in life starting out simple, and getting wrangled as you age... but... hmm... maybe you're making this metaphor a little too complicated.

Anyway, that, or a screaming eagle with a flaming skull in it's talons would be badass.
posted by phrontist at 9:26 PM on July 9, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

What about a tattoo representing some of the tools of the trade that have contributed to findings that resonate with you or that you find especially beautiful, e.g., a telescope, an astrolabe, a space shuttle, etc.? My uncle, brother and I plan, for example, to get tattoos of the Chandra X-Ray observatory (although more as a tribute to an individual than to the science it's provided).
posted by carmicha at 9:44 PM on July 9, 2008

here's the particle zoo/cloud chamber tattoo... i'd vote for that.

http://carlzimmer.typepad.com/sciencetattoo/2008/05/subatomic-doodl.html
posted by geos at 9:47 PM on July 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I like the idea of choosing an alchemical symbol for an element that has some meaning to you or that you study, but it may be that that only works if you already do a science which has interesting symbols.
posted by you're a kitty! at 10:11 PM on July 9, 2008

Something based on the trajectory of a probe launched from the solar system using gravity assist.
posted by Dasein at 10:13 PM on July 9, 2008

You could do a Hertzsprung-Russel Diagram
posted by skewedoracle at 10:51 PM on July 9, 2008

Kepler's Model of the solar system based on Platonic solids, while not astronomically correct, would make for interesting tattoo art.
posted by adamrice at 7:15 AM on July 10, 2008

Hydrogen Atom?
posted by sebastienbailard at 7:28 AM on July 10, 2008

I like the symbols for the sun and each planet.... Laying them out in AU-relative distance is probably too much to ask, so perhaps each symbol in a line across your shoulder blades, or down an arm?
posted by zpousman at 7:57 AM on July 10, 2008

A while ago there was an AskMe about a monument in a cemetery in Italy, I think, which was decorated with interesting carvings. The explanation seemed to be that the deceased had been a physicist or astronomer, and these carvings related to his work. They were interesting, artistic and rather cryptic (no pun intended), and might be inspiring for you. Unfortunately I can't find the Ask, but maybe someone with better search-fu could dig it up. I'll show myself out.
posted by Quietgal at 8:10 AM on July 10, 2008

I asked my friend who is in physics grad school and he said the following:

I like F=ma on the fists, but I'd put that on one and I = \Delta p on the other. ("impulse equals change in mometum')

Hell, that sounds cool to me and I'm not even a physics person.
posted by Waitwhat at 8:38 AM on July 10, 2008

A friend of mine got the catalog number of a supernova, the light of which reached earth the day she was born.
posted by bastionofsanity at 2:10 PM on July 10, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]