Etymology

micronova

M3I1C3R1O1N1O1V4A1

Today it means: A stellar outburst about one millionth the strength of a classical nova. Full definition →

Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

Coined by the Douglas Vogt of the Diehold Foundation, later used by Ben Davidson in a similar sense, but since 2022 used in a scientific context to refer to an entirely different phenomenon than the speculative and unscientific one of Vogt and Davidson. From micro- + nova.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.