How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming - Mike Brown [103]
“It’s a surprise,” I said. “A surprise for you.”
When the name Eris was announced in the press a few weeks later, many people who had been following closely got what they took to be the inside joke on the name of the moon. I had called the moon Dysnomia. Dysnomia was one of the children of Eris, and she was the daemon spirit of lawlessness. Xena on TV had been played by Lucy Lawless. People assumed that Dysnomia was a sly nod to that original nickname.
I was happy to take credit for the wordplay, but in reality it was an accident that I hadn’t even noticed until someone pointed it out to me. I’ll just chalk that up, once again, to cosmic fate.
On the day that the names were announced, I couldn’t wait to get home to tell Diane.
“I named the moon for you,” I told her.
“You named the moon Diane?” she asked.
I explained that since the name Diane had long ago been taken by an obscure asteroid, I had had to be subtle. When Jim Christy discovered Pluto’s moon, he took the first syllable of Charlene—his wife’s name—and made a name out of it that’s found in mythology: Charon. In searching for the perfect name for Eris’s moon, I had looked for one that had the first syllable of Diane. Dysnomia is, admittedly, a bit clunkier than Charon, but there, in the first syllable, is my wife, Diane, whose family frequently calls her Di.
“Dysnomia is named for you,” I said. “It’s my present forever.”
“Um, thanks, I think,” said Diane.
After some contemplation, she added, “This doesn’t excuse you from Christmas presents, you know.”
A year earlier, when the existence of Xena was first announced, I had considered naming the potentially tenth planet after Lilah in some way. Diane had dissuaded me.
“What if we have a second child and you never find another planet?” she said.
That was a convincing argument.
I told her she should take the moon naming as a good sign: While it was possible that we might had a second child, there would be only one wife!
“Um, thanks, I think,” said Diane, again.
• • •
Many people know about the Rose Parade, which winds through Pasadena every New Year’s Day just as it did four days before the discovery of Eris in 2005. Less well known is the yearly alternative version of the Rose Parade called the Doo Dah Parade, which goes along some of the same main parade route as the Rose Parade. It attracts large crowds and features things such as marching toilets, a Doo Dah Queen (usually in drag), flying tortillas, and a Precision Grill team, cooking up barbecue along the way. In 2006, it also featured a New Orleans Jazz Funeral for Pluto organized by some local astronomers with a sense of humor. The eight planets were each represented by a costumed astronomer with a large cardboard name tag hanging around his or her neck. They carried Pluto in a casket to sounds of New Orleans jazz. The astronomers invited me to participate and gave me a cardboard name tag that read: “Mike Brown: Pluto Killer.” I had agreed to march in the parade on one condition: that Eris also be invited. Eris, played by Lilah, was pushed in a stroller down the parade route by her father.
Like most marchers in the Doo Dah Parade, we got quizzical looks, a few claps, a smattering of boos, and a lot of tortillas thrown at us. I spent most of my time trying to make sure Lilah didn’t pick them up and eat them. But still, Pluto was dead, and it was good to participate in its burial.
• • •
But not everyone was ready to bury Pluto just yet.
On the very day of the vote to demote Pluto and Eris, a few astronomers began collecting signatures protesting the details of the IAU decision. They issued a simple statement:
We, as planetary scientists and astronomers, do not agree with the IAU’s definition of a planet, nor will we use it. A better definition is needed.
It’s hard to argue with that statement. As much as I am proud of the astronomers who had the guts to go against emotional sentiment and to remake the solar system correctly, the actual definition by which they did it is pretty clunky. In fact, I won’t use it, either.