Science News – ‘Tenth Planet’ Bigger Than Pluto
Scientists are debating whether our solar system’s 10th planet… unofficially named “Xena” with a moon named “Gabriel”… is officially a planet. After all, it’s bigger than Pluto, which many people doubt should be officially a planet (it isn’t in a proper planetary orbit and it doesn’t have a moon, for two). [CORRECTION: it does have a moon; it’s named Charon. Charon was discovered when I was 8 years old and had already learned my planets.]
Now…what should be the planet’s official name? It should be something from mythology, after all, not from an Action Pack syndicated TV show.
I have an idea, which let the record show I proclaim here on Monitor Duty:
It should be called Procrustes, named after the mythic thief who had an exacting standard for his houseguests. (They had to exactly fit into his iron bed. If they were too short, he would stretch them, and if they were too tall he’d chop them down to size.) The moon for the planet could be named Theseus after the man who put Procrustes to his own standard.
Given all the questioning as to whether the planet meets the standards, I think it would be highly appropriate.
This would have the added benefit of updating the children’s mnemonic in a convenient way:
Men Very Early Made Jars So You Now PLay PRoudly!
And should we ever reach the point where Pluto is discounted as a moon, the old Mnemonic could be kept in favor of the new letter P planet.
Actually Pluto does have a moon. It’s called Charon, after the ferryman who carried souls across the Styx into Pluto’s domain.
http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/pluto.html#charon
How on earth did you forget Charon?
Men Very Early Made Jars So You Now PLay PRoudly!
Mercury, Venis, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, URANUS! Neptune, Pluto (and my vote) promethisus.
The point of this is that Uranus is spelled with a U not a Y.
Im a nerd.
[Michael replies: Yeah, I know that and I didn’t know what letter to bold since it’s actually the sound of U/you which is being used. And if you’re going to get picky, I’ll point out that I’m has an apostrophe.]
I say: Janus or perhaps Juno