Friends are always asking me about stories they see in the news that “prove” something new in physics. As a theoretical physicist, this always irks me a bit. I see science through a mathematical lens and that’s good enough for me—a physical experiment is just icing on the cake. So just like the dessert, the cake itself is the best part.
That’s why I absolutely loved the title of this recent National Geographic article: Extreme black hole vindicates Einstein (again)
Nailed it.
The author’s choice to include “again” in the title provided a subtle hint at the backstory, as experiments have continued to validate Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity for almost 100 years.
Sometimes we’re waiting for engineering to catch up so we can perform the experiment. We saw this in 2015 when LIGO’s Dual Detectors were able to detect gravitational waves. And sometimes we’re waiting for the universe to present us with the perfect experimental setup, like the solar eclipse in 1919. This time it was a combination of both—the ability to analyze huge datasets and fortuitous cosmic timing which positioned a star close to a black hole.
The connection to writing? As writers, especially technical writers, we can get complacent with our document titles by focusing just on the mechanics—drafting an explanatory title that succinctly summarizes the topic. What we forget is that the title is also an opportunity to set the stage for the reader by providing a nugget of context or positioning the document within its content landscape.