SKIRMISHER

Xena, the 10th planet that people with excessive ear and nose hair often preferred calling “2003 UB313″, has a new name: Eris.

Yes, it’s the same planet that indirectly caused Pluto’s “eviction” from the smugly elitist Big Planets-only Club. Which makes the name “Eris” — the Greek goddess of chaos and strife — wickedly fitting.

Eris’ discoverer, Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology, said the name was an obvious choice, calling it “too perfect to resist.”

In mythology, Eris caused a quarrel among goddesses that sparked the Trojan War. In real life, Eris forced scientists to define a planet that eventually led to Pluto getting the boot. Soon after Pluto’s dismissal from the club of classical planets, hundreds of scientists circulated a petition protesting the decision.

And as this is the season for name-calling, Eris’s moon will also from now on be called “Dysnomia,” which in the same sardonic joke thread made at the expense of Greek mythology would be Eris’s “real-life” daughter known as the spirit of lawlessness.

via MSNBC

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