As an editor, I’m a stickler for words. Juggling and switching out words for a living, I have my favorites but also my peeves, words that are so innately clumsy, misleading, or cringe-worthy that I just want to get rid of them.

Reconstruction of our ancestor. I don’t know why he has a haircut, either.

This is why I think we should rename our solar system’s most unfortunately named planet Minerva (even starting an ill-fated petition), and think we should be careful about naming that yet-undiscovered planet that might be responsible for shenanigans out in the boondocks. I’ve also ranted about renaming the Stone Age and (more often that I care to link) recasting how we discuss literary genre.

Well, I’ve found another cause. In the wake of recent archaeological finds, the term “Denisovan” has joined “Neanderthal” as a common term of reference for an extinct form of human being. We could, perhaps, use “Heidelberger” for Homo heidelbergensis. Other human species suggest ready common terms: Rudolfian, Habilis, Floresian, Ergaster, Antecessor.

But Homo erectus? At least in English, this scientific name suffers the same cringe-worthiness as “Uranus.” Urine-us? Your anus? And, the species name is misleading. Our ancestors had been standing upright long before these folks came along. Continue reading →

On the Two Johns science fiction podcast #12, a Science Facts episode, John Austin and I were discussing the axial tilt of Uranus. I brought up the proposal I had made to rename the poorly named seventh planet in honor of Minerva. Why?

1. In English, the most common language for science, both of the pronunciations of Uranus sound obscene.
2. Uranus, being the god of the entire sky, is absurd as the patron of a single planet.
3. The other planets in the solar system were named for Roman gods. Uranus is merely the Latinized name of a Greek deity.
4. In Greek myth, Uranus was a primordial deity far removed from the other gods who have given their names to planets in our solar system.
5. There is an asteroid named Minerva in orbital association with the asteroids Aegis and Gorgoneion, but these other two names are Greek names for things associated with Athena. The asteroid should be renamed Athena, freeing up the Latin name Minerva.
6. The names of major planets are dominated by gods. Venus is the only major planet named for a goddess. Let’s have another.
7. In contrast to triumphant Mars, Minerva was often depicted with her sword lowered in sympathy for the dead. This matches nicely to the planet’s tilted axis of rotation.

Well, John took this proposal to heart and started an online petition. Please add your name to it, share the petition with others, and get our Lady of Wisdom a planet!

I have written before about how sentimental and unscientific—and embarrassingly ungrammatical—the current International Astronomical Union (IAU) definition of planet is. See “Bring Reason Back to Astronomy” for the details.

My plan would have made any object massive enough to maintain a round shape a planet, regardless of what was around it, and regardless of how this would explode the number of planets. I am even okay with moons being a type of planet, if they’re large enough to make themselves spherical.

Well, a team of NASA scientists, headed up by chief Pluto detective Alan Stern, have recently submitted a plan to IAU that closely resembles mine:

The scientists boil it all down to “round objects in space that are smaller than stars.” Yes, that would mean that Earth’s Moon, as well as many others, would be classified as a planet.

Let me bask in my predictive power for a moment. Mmmm… Okay, I’m done. Now, maybe we can get around to my ideas for a simpler way to refer to exoplanets, and a better name for that obnoxiously named seventh planet in our own solar system.