This seems like a better source: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at...

on July 26, 2014

[deleted]

traek · on July 26, 2014

> First of all, it's not necessary to use a word such as "menagerie" in any article, apparently it's being used incorrectly anyways, it means "a collection of animals".

A commonly used secondary definition of menagerie is "a strange or diverse collection of people or things."

dang · on July 26, 2014

Thanks. We changed to that from http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2014/07/25/mysterious-signa....

WaxProlix · on July 26, 2014

Thanks, the writing alone on that other one was atrocious.

houseofshards · on July 26, 2014

Precisely ! Fe XXV ? That sounds a bit like descendent from a long line of monarchs.

gus_massa · on July 26, 2014

I also thought that FE XXV was a misspelling, or bad use of notation. But it's (apparently) the usual notation in spectroscopy. http://www.nist.gov/data/PDFfiles/jpcrd200.pdf

FE I is not ionized Fe (26 protons, 26 electrons, 0 net charge)

FE II is ionized Fe (26 protons, 25 electrons, +1 net charge)

FE III is not ionized Fe (26 protons, 24 electrons, +2 net charge)

...

FE XXV has (26 protons, 2 electrons, +24 net charge)

FE XXVI has (26 protons, 1 electron, +25 net charge)

--

This is not the standard chemical notation. In chemistry:

FE II is ionized Fe++ (26 protons, 24 electrons, +2 net charge)

FE III is ionized Fe+++ (26 protons, 23 electrons, +3 net charge)

guard-of-terra · on July 26, 2014

NASA site spells it the same. Presumably it's how physicists call ions.

tinco · on July 26, 2014

I learned to spell ions like that in highschool, though never more than Fe III, I think.