What's in a name?
Astronomical types have been all a-twitter for the past few weeks about a redefinition of "planet" which had the effect of expelling the object-formerly-known-as-a-planet Pluto from the august fraternity of planets.
Turns out the distant orbiting body which made all this fuss necessary has received a new identity, too. Its discoverer called it "Xena", and its small moon "Gabrielle", for reasons which should be obvious to any student of recent American pop culture. Unfortunately, that's not good enough for the International Astronomical Union, which on Wednesday officially renamed it Eris after the Greek goddess of strife and discord, best known in mythology for offering a golden apple to the "most beautiful" of the three goddesses Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena, prompting a divine feud that led to the Trojan War.
Still, the original namesake may get the last ki-yi-yi after all. The newly-rechristened dwarf planet's neighbor has been officially titled Dysnomia, after the mythological spirit of lawlessness.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Yam @ 9:28AM | 2006-09-20| permalink
Aw c'mon. There is a long tradition of allowing the discoverer to name the discovery, with such pleasantly whimsical results as the Sonic the Hedgehog growth gene, the Strange Quark, the elements Californium and Berkelium, and many others listed at http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/sillymols.htm
I deeply regret the renaming of the subplanetoids formerly known as Xena and Gabrielle.
Post a Comment