To Be or Not to Be... A Planet.

I've been meaning to post about this for a while. So last year, they found an object (actually 3 or 4) that seemed the equal to or greater than the size of Pluto in the Kuiper Belt - the ring of icy debris that orbits beyond Neptune. But tomorrow, Nature will publish the first measurements of the size of the object, which is estimated to be 30% larger than Pluto.

So now that brings the question of what is a planet, and what isn't, into a raging debate in the science world. What I find interesting in all of this is the assumption that the object(s) will be named after Roman deities once they are accepted into the planetary pantheon. I find that to be incredibly annoying, so-called Ancient Western Civ-centric, and just plain regressive. Why can't they take a look at something out of Sumerian or Egyptian, or indigenous cultures?

Then again, when you think about it, these are just hunks of ice and rock way the hell out there. Do I really care if they name these things more responsibly? Does it really make a difference when in truth, all the stars in the sky have many names, and belong to different interstellar families and stories throughout the oral traditions of the peoples of the world. They are not rigidly aligned by the conventions of one tradition, but rather a million million points of light, woven together by mystics, dreamers, and pets of the ages, forming intricate matrices of our own history between them, even though the sum of all our generations are but a moment in their own lives.