SPEAKER_03: Wait. You're listening to radio lab.
SPEAKER_06:
WNYC. No small talk. What are we here for?
SPEAKER_04:
Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Hey, it's Leif.
SPEAKER_05: I'm Lulu. This is radio lab. And Lulu. Wait. Yes. Are we here for news?
SPEAKER_05: So we are here for news.
Okay. So as you know, I have to do the- Do the, do the.
SPEAKER_05: Previously on-
SPEAKER_04: Okay, you want me to do it?
SPEAKER_05: Sure. Yeah, you do.
SPEAKER_04: Sure, sure, sure. Okay. So last week we did a crowd-pleasing episode about- What is that word?
SPEAKER_06: Is that Z double O Z V E.
SPEAKER_04: Zouzvay? Zouzvay? Zouzvay?
SPEAKER_06: Zouzvay?
SPEAKER_05:
Zouzvay.
SPEAKER_06: Wow.
SPEAKER_05:
Wow.
If you did not listen, I would actually hit pause right now. Go listen to that first because there are some pretty big spoilers coming.
SPEAKER_04: So basically Zouzvay is this mischievous piece of space rock that is neither moon nor not moon that is orbiting Venus and the sun, which makes it dance in all these wild and beautiful and different ways and also means that we don't know where it's going, which gives you this giant thrill that maybe we're not stuck in a clock where everything is ordered and known in the cosmos. It's more like a club where there's possibility and it tears a hole in your heart and it doesn't actually have a name yet.
SPEAKER_05: Excellent.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_05:
And so given that this was the first discovered of an entirely new kind of thing in our solar system and it's called 2002 VE68, it needs a better name. And of course the natural name felt like it should be Zouzvay. Had to be. It was destined. Yeah. So we put in a proposal to this sort of all powerful working group for small bodies nomenclature of the International Astronomical Union, which is like- They're the guardians of the galaxy.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, basically. They were about to take a vote. And when we released the episode, the secretary of that working group, Gareth Williams, had told us- We don't have a resolution as of yet.
SPEAKER_07: Okay. We're still waiting on two members to vote.
SPEAKER_05: But actually- Left, right. Hello? I can hear you.
SPEAKER_05: Can you hear me?
SPEAKER_05: Hey. But now, a little over a week later, just got off the phone with Gareth. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_04: Votes are all in?
SPEAKER_05: Votes are all in.
SPEAKER_07:
Okay. And- Well, I'm very pleased to announce that the working group Small Body Nomenclature has approved the name Zouzvay. Oh my God.
SPEAKER_04: Are you serious?
SPEAKER_05: Wow.
SPEAKER_04: Are you serious?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah. They're naming it Zouzvay. Oh, wow.
Great. I also just broke the news to Brian Skiff, the discoverer of Zouzvay who helped us propose the name. Well, that's a great little coup on everyone's part. And-
SPEAKER_06: Oh, good. That's so cool.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah. I also called Alex Foster. A poster guy? The poster guy to be like-
SPEAKER_04:
SPEAKER_05: Like your mistake is now etched in the heavens forever. Now, having gone through what we went through, that retroactively makes the poster correct.
SPEAKER_05:
Oh, that's amazing.
SPEAKER_06: Wow.
SPEAKER_04: How do you feel? I mean, I feel awesome.
SPEAKER_05: Like it's like, I don't know. It's the first thing like it that we ever found and now it has a weird one of a kind So that feels right. How do you feel?
SPEAKER_07: I feel happy. I think it's a good name.
SPEAKER_05: Can you tell me what you voted?
SPEAKER_07: Well, since it's now been approved, I can say that I voted for it.
SPEAKER_05: I just want to give you a big hug right now.
SPEAKER_07: A virtual hug will have to be since we're quite a few miles apart. Yes.
SPEAKER_05: Yes. Oh my God.
SPEAKER_04: Wait, but wasn't there like that it had to be a myth? How did it get past that rule, the mythological rule?
SPEAKER_07: Yeah. That's a sticking point for the people that voted against it. I mean, he doesn't know exactly why everyone voted, but he thinks we did get like no votes
SPEAKER_05: because of that rule.
SPEAKER_07: But he also said that there are circumstances under which non-mythological names would be accepted if there's a good reason why. Really? I didn't know that. And the cute story behind this name, I think swayed the members who voted for it.
SPEAKER_07: Yes. But we don't want to encourage, you know, a lot of non-mythological names.
SPEAKER_05: And in the end, he says, It sort of just scraped by. Is this a past by a narrow margin? Has anything ever been named after a typo before? Mmm, after a typo.
SPEAKER_07: Oh, that's an interesting one. I'm having a hard time thinking of a prior example of a typo. Gee whiz, I can't think of anything right off hand either.
SPEAKER_04: Wow. That is wild. This funny little thing you like squinted at this typo that a poster designer put on a piece of paper that reached your eye that then led you on this whole chase, like that that is now immortalized and will outlast all of us in the sky.
SPEAKER_05: Right. And to me, I think what's kind of beautiful about that is something that started to dawn on me as I was talking to Brian Skiff.
SPEAKER_03: I think it was Seppo Mikkola and Paul Weigert did the real work, of course, identifying this thing.
SPEAKER_05: I was trying to sort of, you know, give him his flowers for starting us off on this whole journey, but he wouldn't take them.
SPEAKER_03: I hope people get the idea that, you know, people do their little bits and pieces incrementally and and, you know, it works out.
SPEAKER_05: It sounds like it's astronomy is a team sport.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: And then when I was talking to Alex Foster.
SPEAKER_06: It's the weirdest thing because it feels like my part in this is so small. He did the same thing. It was just an accident. It's so silly that this could happen.
SPEAKER_05: I feel like I didn't do anything like what did I do? I did a tiny thing. And the thing that finally hit me is that each of us was sort of stepping back to see ourselves as just one little ripple in the in the like butterfly effect that you just described where one seemingly insignificant thing led to another, led to another, led to another. And to me, that's kind of a microcosm of the world that Zeus they lives in, right, where where bodies move through space and exert a web of invisible and often unknowable forces
SPEAKER_05:
on each other, leading to a universe where things happen that you just cannot predict.
SPEAKER_04: Wow.
SPEAKER_05: But OK, so so that's actually only half of the news. OK, what's the other half?
SPEAKER_05: So it was so fun. It was so exciting to name a quasi moon of Venus. This whole time, we've also been working and lobbying the same people, the International Astronomical Union, to basically open up fan submissions to name a quasi moon of Earth.
SPEAKER_04: No.
SPEAKER_05: So we're going to do a contest.
SPEAKER_04: We're going to do an International Astronomical Union, Radiolab fan contest.
SPEAKER_05: So that listeners can name a quasi moon?
SPEAKER_05: That listeners can do it, too. So we did it. I want everybody to be able to do this. And not even just for Venus. This is now one of ours. This is Earth.
SPEAKER_04: Oh, my goodness. Wait, this is awesome.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: And this isn't one of those companies that's like, name a star after your sweetheart for Valentine's Day for $29.99. And then you're like, baby, it's named Marty.
SPEAKER_05: It is not that. Although if you do want to send me $29.99, I'm happy to take it.
SPEAKER_05: No, this is for real. So the caveats are like, we're still working out the details with them. We don't know what quasi moon it's going to be or how the naming exactly is going to work. And because this is, you know, like a big official deal, it's going to take a little while to get the whole thing going. What we do know is that it's going to need to have a mythological name, whatever that means. OK.
SPEAKER_04:
But any culture, any myth?
SPEAKER_05: Any culture, any time. They've even used like mythology from Lord of the Rings.
SPEAKER_04: OK. So kind of broad definition of myth.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah. OK, great. And so we're going to announce all the details later. But part of the reason I wanted to announce it so that people kind of think up some good mythological inspired names and work on like a 300 character explanation. Yes. Oh, my gosh. So like if you out there, whether you are a school kid or whether you are a grown up who has never paid attention to astronomy in their whole life until right now, or maybe this is the thing you think about every day, whatever, whoever you are. This is a pretty rare thing. They don't do this kind of fan contest very often. And anybody can help label this thing in the sky. How fun.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Well, you had the idea just to get people's juices flowing when we were trying to name Zuzwe. You had the idea. I don't think it works. It's not quite mythological. Your idea was Quasimundo. Quasimundo. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Which I think is pretty good.
SPEAKER_04: It's not bad, but they can do better. There you go. There's the bad idea to make you feel safe with your submission.
SPEAKER_05: Quasimundo.
SPEAKER_04:
Quasimundo.
I cannot wait to read people's ideas and their justifications. Oh, my God.
SPEAKER_05: I'm so excited. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: There's going to be some good stuff in there.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Well, bravo. That is some good news. That it? You got any more tricks up your sleeve? That's it.
SPEAKER_05: Okay.
SPEAKER_05: That's it. Nothing more.
SPEAKER_04:
That's it. Well, thanks for listening. Hang on in just a couple of days. We'll have a brand new Radiolab episode for you right here in this very feed.
So check back in. Thanks for listening. Bye. Bye, Zuzwe.
Bye.
Bye.
SPEAKER_05:
SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Hazel and I'm from Silver Spring. Radiolab was created by Chad Belmont and is edited by Soren Wheeler.
Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are co-hosts.
Dylan Keith is our director of Sound is Land.
Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Brassler, Eketty Foster-Kees, W. Harry
Fortuna, David Gabel, Maria Paz-Kutieres, Sindhu Nainesam-Bhadhan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Khari, Sarah Sandback, Ariane Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster.
Our fact checkers are Brian Kelly, Emily Krueger, and Natalie Middleton.
Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Luis Vera and I'm calling from Mexico City.
Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Science Sandbox, the Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Temple Foundation.
Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
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