Feb 1, 2006

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.

5 comments:

flygirl said...

Naming them after Roman myth would keep them consistent :-) Many of the crators, canyons and valleys on Venus and, I think Europa, are named after members of Hindu traditions and pantheon, and another moon of Saturn or Jupiter (I forget which) has features named after characters in mythologies from around the world. It would be nice, now that we are bit better informed, if they did try something non-Greco Roman.

as for what consitutes a planet - well, if it's bigger than Pluto, it a planet - how hard is that?!

I love that we all saw the same constellations, but gave them a myriad of names and legends.

Rage said...

Cool - I knew that they'd run out of Greco-Roman names for all the different named structures, but who knows - maybe they'd move into Middle Earth, since Tolkien was so kind as to create hundreds of names for us to choose from. :)

I definitely agree about all the different names and legends - more than we could possibly know or hear...

flygirl said...

Tolkien *flash of light* Why didn't I think of that!...

Rage said...

Yeah - and he even has names of stars and other celestial bodies...

flygirl said...

Yes *dreamily* Tolkien is all things....

...now where are my extended editions?...