How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming - Mike Brown [106]
Ah, Easterbunny. I had been thinking about it now for years. The names Sedna and Orcus (another large Kuiper belt object that we had turned up) had fit the characteristics of the objects’ orbits, and the names Eris and Haumea had practically fallen out of the sky at us. Even Quaoar, we felt, was a nice tribute to local mythology.
But what about Easterbunny? Unlike Santa, which has so many interesting characteristics that there were many possible names, Easterbunny has no obvious hook. Its surface is covered with large amounts of almost pure methane ice, a consequence of the fact that it is just a little smaller than Pluto and lacks enough gravity to hold a substantial nitrogen atmosphere, which is scientifically fascinating and all (really, it is) but not easily relatable to terrestrial mythology. For a while I was working on coming up with a name related to the oracles at Delphi: Some people interpret the reported trancelike state of the oracles to be related to natural gas (methane) seeping out of the earth there. After some thought, I decided this theme was just dumb. Strike one.
I spent some time considering Easter- and equinox-related myths, as a tribute to the time of discovery. I was quite excited to learn about the pagan Eostre (or Oestre, or Oster, or many other spellings) after whom Easter is named, until I later realized that this mythology is perhaps itself mythological and, more important, that an asteroid had already been named after this goddess hundreds of years ago. Strike two.
Finally, in mythological desperation, I considered rabbit gods, of which there are many. Native American lore is full of hares, but they usually have names such as Hare or, better, Big Rabbit. I considered Manabozho, an Algonquin rabbit trickster god, but I must admit, perhaps superficially, that the “bozo” part at the end was a turnoff. There are many other names of rabbit gods, but the names just didn’t speak to me. Strike three.
These initial attempts had all happened long ago, and I had given up, figuring I would wait for the IAU decision on Santa. But now, with some prodding, I got back to work.
Suddenly, it dawned on me: There was a potentially interesting small island in the South Pacific that I hadn’t looked into before. I wasn’t familiar with the mythology of the island, so I had to look it up, and I found Makemake (pronounced Hawaiian style as “mah-kay mah-kay”), the chief god, the creator of humanity, and the god of fertility. I had discovered Easterbunny during the time that Diane was pregnant with Lilah. Easterbunny was the last of these discoveries. I have the distinct memory of feeling a fertile abundance pouring out of the entire universe during that time. Easterbunny was part of that. Easterbunny would be Makemake, the fertility god of the island of Rapa Nui.
Rapa Nui was first visited by Europeans on Easter Sunday, 1722, precisely 283 years before the discovery of the Kuiper belt object now known as Makemake. Because of this first visit, the island is known in Spanish (it is a territory of Chile) as Isla de Pascua, but around here, it is far better known by its English name of Easter Island.
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The name Makemake was accepted quite quickly and with a modest fanfare by the IAU; as predicted, a decision on Santa was soon rendered, only two years after the initial proposals had been submitted. This time there was no fanfare, no press release, no official pronouncements. The name just appeared on the official IAU list of names one day as Haumea. Three years after the Spanish astronomers either did or did not fraudulently steal our discovery, we were officially vindicated by the IAU, which accepted our name, signaling that we appropriately deserved the credit.
Sort of.
On the IAU’s list, next to the newly added name Haumea, in the space reserved for the name of the discoverers, is a big blank spot. Haumea, unique among all objects in the outer solar system, has no discoverer. It