New planet Found! (1 Viewer)

[Scott McGillivray]

Okay. It's official. You guys are nuts!

 

[Zen Butler]

Marcus Welby, I mean, might as well be.

 

[Steve Christou]

Oh boy! What we have here is a failure to communicate, for all we know Zen may be replying to someones post on another thread from a year or two ago. Is there a program that can translate gibberish? I'm keeding Zenboy!

btw I still think the newly discovered planetoid should have been named Muffy.

 

[BrianW]

I like Muffy. Muffy's good.

 

[Mary M S]

Since planets could often be likened to a certain type of beautiful women I’ve known:

“As distant prospects please us, but when near
We find but desert rocks and fleeting air”.
Samuel Garth: The Dispensatory

I’m happy to see that the prospective new addition to planethood in our solar system has been labeled in the feminine. Our current list seeming overpoweringly Masculine: Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto in outnumbering the feminine Gaea and Venus. The Planets just don’t appear to be Pythagoreanly balanced for “Musica Mundana” Boethius states concerning the laws of proportion that govern music and the cosmos "we love similarity, but hate and resent dissimilarity". Since the intervals the Pythagorean found most musical corresponded to the simple numbers making up their beloved tetractys 1,2,3,4. (2 masculine, 2 feminine).

"Muffy" indeed, have some respect! More ‘goddesses’ please!

 

[Grant B]

Ummm, how about Cheryl so my wife can have the goddess status she's always wanted

 

[Tony Whalen]

I think we should call it "Dwayne"

You know... as in "The Rock".

*rimshot*

*crickets*

 

[Steve Christou]

oops sorry about that Mary, it's just, you know, I had a cat called Muffy... and Sedna is an awful name, it's an anagram for chrissakes! [ramble mode on] Goddessesses? Hmmm Athena is a good one, Hera, Queen of the Gods... what about the Norse gods? Let's see, Thor, Loki, Odin, Asgard, no that was where they lived, now who was Thor's girlfriend again? I can't remember and I used to read the bloody comics, damn! Thor's hammer Mjolnir, I remember the name of his hammer but not the name of his girl, pathetic! [ramble mode off]

 

[BrianW]

Mary: Great post.

 

[Richard_T]

If I could be serious here for a moment. Who really cares about some planet 15 billion miles away or whatever it is. We have so many problems here on our own planet that could use the money the world spends on space exploration. I mean, come on. What does the U.S. spend ever year on this crap? Billions?
How much did that Mars landing cost? Millions? We have no idea what our oceans have in their depths but they get all excited telling us that Mars "may" have had water at some time but has none now. Who cares!

Why doesn't all this money they spend on this shit (sorry) not get spent on bettering our own planet before we worry about some little useless planet (or so it's called) that we will never have use for. I'm sorry but Richard (the other one) had it 100% right on. This kind of crap just pisses me off. Sorry for the rant all.

 

[Mary M S]

There are quite a few (and some of them tired old reasons) why we should be exploring off-world. One of my favorites, ...we may need to get off this planet or prevent something from striking it, (its not its fall, but that rocky sudden stop which makes us go poof!) A planet killer sized asteroid is in all liklyhood not a question of 'if' but 'when.' Maybe 100 generations of generations of tax-dollars into our future but none the less....

Personally I greatly fear mans propensicity for self destructive behavior (which all the monies of the world will not cure) will make fleeing this blue ball a neccessity and can only hope for our species that our current flegling research outstrips our current confinement.

..to return (rather Impertinenly) to my planet baby names book.

True, - Sedna ‘sounds like’ some goopy brown leavenings in the bottom of a sewage pipe!
(muffy has the advantage of sounding ‘cute’ if a 3 year old speaks it)
I think if we are branching in planet christening beyond the traditional Greek/Roman major deities, I can think of a few which ‘sound’ better when spoken.

“Latis” , a Celtic goddess associated also with water and (wo ho! - a perk) after those long hard days staring at what the rover beamed back; additionally the proprietress of ale and meade!!

Juno/Hera I would rather decline due to my distaste for her position as patroness of human women in marriage considering she is an immortal suffering from severe royal PMS rather more often than many of her counterparts.

If you ever contemplate when the female is the deadlier of the species as in “Shoot the Women First.” There are some goddess’s with fine sounding names like “Adrasteia” an avenger of righteousness

My top pick however for the next planetary sized designee, has to be a gesture to Tolkien’s current revived popularity with the masses. We should name our newly discovered planet… “Cellar Door”.
This favorite of JR the linguist, if spoken in 3 syllables quickly as one word, is acoustically pleasing in that ancient Welch delicacy of manner he so dearly loved. Let the extraterrestrials if they come struggle to decipher our base language in planetary guidebooks and wonder, “why did they call it a plank which opens?”

 

[BrianW]

Richard, you're right. Our planet and our society both need some work. There are a number of things that need fixing right here on Earth. To the extent that we are able, we should strive to fix all the problems we can identify.

But the extent to which we can fix things is not unlimited. We will never cure all of our planet's ills no matter how much money and manpower we spend trying. The trappings, as well as the benefits, of being human will always be with us. If we wait until we solve all of our problems before engaging in exploration, then we would never explore.

And what you have said about government spending can also be said for individual spending. If you've bought any DVDs this year, don't you think that money could have been better spent feeding the hungry or mine sweeping in Eastern Europe? If, from now on, you vowed to spend every discretionary dime that comes into your possession on fixing our planet before spending it on anything fun, how soon do you think it would be before you could spend it on anything fun? Trust me, you'd die before everything got fixed, and your life would be miserable for your magnanimous efforts. That being the case, I don't see the harm in your buying and enjoying a few – or even a lot of – DVDs.

Likewise, governments can't fix everything, even with their multi-billion dollar budgets. Nor should they be required to spend every available resource trying, because it just won't work. That being the case, I don't see the harm in astronomers pointing their instruments to the sky and sharing their discoveries with us. After all, unless we remain in touch with what a wondrous place the Universe is, we may eventually forget that our own planet is one worth fixing.

 

[Mary M S]

Brian that was beautiful and puts my flippancy to shame.
Apology to Richard, ..but my soul feels a mystery I cannot express (and so I clown) that our future is entangled and must encompass that which is beyond our own atmosphere.

 

[JonZ]

I saw something on Discovery Science last night. It was excellent - talking about the planets in other systems that have been discovered recently andhow new information is forcing them to rethink how planets form.

It also said that by 2012 there will be a space obiting telescope that is 700 times more accurate and powerful than the ones were using now.

Scientists truly believe in the next 20 years to find another earth type planet if its out there.

Regarding Space Exploration, Id glady contribute what I could to it. I dont think earths problems are fixable.Theres too much greed,stupidty and corruption to get anything done.Humanitys future is looking pretty bleak IMHO.

Space Exploration is about knowledge and understanding and I think its important.

 

[Julie K]

First of all, that money is not loaded into a rocket and blasted into space. That money is spent right here, little of it as there is. Contraray to popular opinion, the budget for space exploration is very small.

We will never solve all our problems here. Space exploration may in fact help with some of them - there are many spin-offs from the space program that are helping people right here on earth every day.

Edited to add:

This one is not a problem, but someday one of them will be, possibly a very large problem. Our observation and exploration of space may be the only thing that could save us. Without it we could fare no better than the dinosaurs.

 

[BrianW]

Julie, what are you doing back here? I thought the Mars expedition was a one-way trip!

(Nice job, btw, to you and all your colleagues. Very well done, indeed.)

 

[Andrew Testa]

Indeed! Welcome back Julie, and congratulations on a superb job lobbing those landers right on target. Unfortunately you weren't around at Xmas (at least not posting) so I saved some holiday carols for you. Download the MP3s and enjoy. You're welcome in advance.

A Very Scary Solstice

Okay, threadfart over. Move along.

Andy

 

[Julie K]

*sniff* Those are beautiful. *sniff*

But back to new planet discoveries - I really wish someone would just go ahead and name one of them Yuggoth.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Leave it to Julie, eh?

I'd like to name an Oort Cloud planetoid after my cat Attila.