Zoozve

SPEAKER_07: I'm Kai Wright. On the next Notes from America, climate change feels more present tense than ever and it is scary. But can you see a light at the end of this burning hot tunnel? How hope can be part of the solution. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. SPEAKER_03: SPEAKER_10: I know nothing except one very weird word. That's right. Okay. So hey, this is Latif SPEAKER_05: Nasser and Lulu Miller. This is Radiolab. And today, I'm ready for your story. Where's SPEAKER_05: we're going to start with a mystery about the universe. That I stumbled across in my SPEAKER_05: kids bedroom. Oh. Okay, so about a year ago, I was putting my son to bed, my two year old SPEAKER_05: son, you know that moment where it's like, okay, it's time like I'm in the crib, right? SPEAKER_11: Spike the football run out of the room. Right, exactly. So as I was doing that, I like looked SPEAKER_05: up to the adjacent wall at this poster that we have up. A kids poster of the solar system. SPEAKER_11: Still on brand for the Nasser Munch family. Yeah, very on brand. And I would say it's SPEAKER_05: a little bit more detailed than the average children's solar system poster, which is, you know, why my wife and I picked it in the first place. I get that. So anyway, I look at this poster, it's on the wall. And I like notice something, which is that Venus on this poster, Venus had a moon. And I was like, that's weird. I don't remember Venus having SPEAKER_05: a moon. But like, what do I know? I don't know. You know, right. So I put my kid to SPEAKER_05: bed. So then I went back to my bedroom and then I just look up on my phone. Does Venus have a moon? And the first thing that comes up was a NASA website and it says Venus does SPEAKER_05: not have a moon. Oh yeah. Okay. But then the next morning after my son wakes up, I look SPEAKER_05: at the poster again and on the poster, Venus very much has a moon. And not only does it have a moon, the moon has a name. Okay, wait, I'm actually going to have you read it. Okay, one second. Okay, so I'm unrolling the poster here. Oh, it is in high detail, right? Okay. SPEAKER_05: In here. Tell me what this moon is called. Okay, straining my eyes here. Zoo's they SPEAKER_11: zoos V. Yeah, zoos. Okay. When you see the name, I'm like, that's too weirdly specific to be an SPEAKER_05: accident. Right? That's not just like a poster designer being like a little dot would look cute SPEAKER_11: here. Like it's labeled. Okay, right. Okay, so then I started googling zoos. They it's a nice SPEAKER_11: Google of all words. It's a very Google of all word. And there's there's nothing like like they SPEAKER_05: were literally no results in English. Why? The results were all in check. Huh? And they were about zoos. And I'm like, that's not the thing I'm looking for. Mm hmm. So I was like, Okay, yeah. SPEAKER_06: Where do I go from here? Hi. Hey, Lata. How are you? I'm good. So I called up my friend. Her name SPEAKER_05: is Liz Liz Landau. It's just like a space nerd. But then also you as a professional space. She has spent the last 10 years working with the media department at NASA. Oh, and before that, she used to be CNN space correspondent. Okay. And so I told her I showed her the poster. Zoos SPEAKER_05: Bay. It's like supposed to be a moon for Venus. I've never heard of that. Okay. There are no SPEAKER_05: moons of Venus. Right? Right. So at this point, the next logical step, your signature is very SPEAKER_05: cryptic. Yeah, I've changed it to just writing my name now was to track down the person who made SPEAKER_14: the poster. Oh, good. Okay. A guy named Alex Foster. I'm an illustrator. And I'm from Margate, SPEAKER_14: which is like the southeast coast of the UK. And I was basically like, Did you put zoos on here as SPEAKER_05: a joke? old mapmakers would make up fake town or like a little hidden signature or something? Or is SPEAKER_14: it your dog's name? And no, no, basically, I don't know. I don't know about this stuff. Like, I wanted to make a solar system map. So I looked online and did a bit of research. He says he SPEAKER_05: found a detailed list of all the moons online. And there it was that double O said V. But then SPEAKER_05: when I tried to find that same list, I couldn't find it. I mean, I was like scouring the internet and nothing. Huh? Weird. But then around that same time, I got this text from Liz. So in my head, SPEAKER_10: because you had said zoos, bae, I was like, Oh, it's it's zoos, bae. It's zoos, bae. But then I SPEAKER_10: sort of like looked away from it. And I looked at it again. And I was like, what if what if it's not z o o z? What if it's 2002? And so I just googled 2002 v e. And I found this object. Which I did not SPEAKER_10: know existed before. SPEAKER_14: It's probably my writing as well. Like I write in all caps. I thought it must have been said rather than to until when I told Alex about the mix up. He realized he'd misread his own notes. SPEAKER_14: And I thought that the name zoos, they made more sense. Anyway, okay, so long story short, there SPEAKER_05: is a thing next to Venus. And it is called 2002 v e. It was discovered in 2002. That's why it's SPEAKER_10: called 2002 v e 2002 v e 68. If you're being technical. Yes, but it's not a moon of Venus. SPEAKER_05: So I thought that there was a simple answer to that. But it turns out there isn't it's not a moon of Venus, but it's also not not a moon of Venus. Okay, because 2002 v e, which I'm just gonna keep calling zoos, bae is a mischievous weirdo character that defies long held rules of our solar system. And upends, at least for me, the way I think about the entire universe. Okay, so we humans first discovered zoos, they thanks to a cultural moment of astronomical angst. March 23 1989 in the late 80s early 90s a couple things happened billions go about their day oblivious to the approaching global killer. First of all, this asteroid 458 one is clippiest scientists SPEAKER_08: report that a huge asteroid came close mankind's closest encounter the deadly asteroid around that SPEAKER_05: same time geologists find evidence in the Yucatan that it was an asteroid asteroid speeding object that wiped out the dinosaurs. Then just a couple years later, a comet named Shoemaker Levy nine SPEAKER_08: rained down on Jupiter scientists actually watched for the first time a comet smash into a planet. SPEAKER_05: And before long, people's creeping sense of fear of what else might be out there. Now we look to the skies for our nemesis. SPEAKER_14: Turned into a matter of time, an all out asteroid frenzy. SPEAKER_05: The comet we discovered is the size of New York City. SPEAKER_05: In the 90s, you get asteroid blockbusters like Deep Impact. SPEAKER_11: Oh, and Armageddon. The United States government just asked us to save the world. SPEAKER_05: Yeah. Anybody want to say no? SPEAKER_05: Not to mention, Asteroid. SPEAKER_05: A horde of B grade movies and TV. Nice. And all the while, Our movie is very much based on facts. SPEAKER_06: Could the latest sci-fi blockbuster become a fact? People keep spotting real life asteroids and comets. SPEAKER_05: The comet of the century, Yaku Takei. Comet Hill. SPEAKER_06: Asteroid 1997, XF-11. And the anxiety just compounds. SPEAKER_08: If it had struck, it would have had the effect of 40,000. SPEAKER_08: Nearly 2 million. 300 million. 500 million Hiroshima type bombs. SPEAKER_06: 2028. That could be our last time on Earth. SPEAKER_05: Now imagine bundling up all of that fear and anxiety and plopping it on the desk of this guy. I mean, I actually have no formal training in astronomy, believe it or not. SPEAKER_03: Really? Because that's basically what happens next. I just have a BS in physics, which I just barely got. So this is Brian. I am Brian Skiff. He does, in fact, work in astronomy. At Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. I am a research assistant. SPEAKER_05: Apparently he's sort of like a legend over there. Like basically since the 70s, he's been there like every night and day and holidays and weekends. Anyway, so back in the 90s, during all of that asteroid frenzy, Congress got concerned enough that it sent a mandate to astronomers all over asking them to figure out what else is out there. And so Brian and his colleagues kicked off this brand new asteroid scavenger hunt. Ironios, is that how you pronounce it? SPEAKER_03: Yeah. The Lowell Observatory Near Earth Object Search. NASA likes acronyms when you put in grant proposals. And what they did was... We refurbished a wide field camera of a special kind. Essentially their job was to scan... A substantial fraction of the sky. Every single night. SPEAKER_05: And what they were looking for were... Potentially hazardous asteroids. What they call PHAs. Asteroids that could be... The killer. And it is in this nightly hunt that Brian discovers... Zeusvei. SPEAKER_11: Okay. SPEAKER_05: It looks like an asteroid about the size of the Eiffel Tower. Oh, okay. SPEAKER_05: Imagine something kind of gray and pockmarked and potato shaped. And it's a PHA. Oh. Soon thereafter, people do a bunch of calculations about it. And they're like, it's technically within the range. But it's very, very unlikely to ever hit Earth. Yeah, this is not one of those. Okay. So at that point, Zeusvei seems so unremarkable that Brian kind of mentally crosses it off his list of things to worry about. And... SPEAKER_03: I had no notion that I had even discovered it. Forgets about it entirely. SPEAKER_05: Huh. But fast forward a year and... SPEAKER_09: Can you see my face? I can see your face. SPEAKER_05: Zeusvei catches the attention of this other scientist. In Finland, my name is pronounced simply Seppo Mikola. SPEAKER_09: SPEAKER_05: Back in 2003, Seppo was an astronomer at the University of Turku studying... Celestial mechanics. SPEAKER_09: Basically orbits. It was very simple, actually. Seppo says that when he first noticed Zeusvei, he realized it was in a... SPEAKER_05: Very strange looking situation. SPEAKER_05: As in, its orbit didn't really make sense. So... Hello? Seppo calls up his colleague, whose name is Paul. Paul Weigert from Canada. Whom I also called... I'm not huffing and puffing too much from coming up the stairs and I think I'm good to go. SPEAKER_05: He's also an orbit studying astronomer at the University of Western Ontario. Yes. And he says in order to fully understand how weird Zeusvei's orbit is... Let me think about the best way to explain this. SPEAKER_13: So... You have to understand this one fact about the solar system. SPEAKER_05: It's an ironclad rule of our solar system... SPEAKER_13: That every celestial body moves in an orbit. SPEAKER_05: And even though it can get gravitationally nudged around by other things near it, it primarily orbits one thing. SPEAKER_13: And so the moons orbit planets, the planets orbit the sun... Wait, but moons... Doesn't a moon technically orbit the planet and the sun? SPEAKER_13: The answer is sort of technically, but we're actually talking about something different. What we're talking about is like, it's almost like a primary partner, right? SPEAKER_05: The sun is pulling on everything in the solar system. That's true. But moons, including ours, are much closer to their planets. So it's looping the planet. And that's what Paul says objects in our solar system generally do. Everything hula hoops one bigger thing. Yes. Got it. Now, Seppo and Paul look at Zeusvei... SPEAKER_05: Making careful calculations, computer simulations and so forth. SPEAKER_05: And what they find is it's being pulled around by the sun's gravity. So it orbits the sun, that's its primary partner. But weirdly... Even though it's orbiting the sun... Venus is also keeping this tiny gravitational toehold on it. And because of that, while Zeusvei is going around the sun... SPEAKER_13: It actually stays relatively close to Venus and loops around it. It circles Venus too. To our amazement, it's orbiting both. SPEAKER_11: So Zeusvei is like in a poly relationship with the sun and Venus? Yeah. Which, by the way, nobody has ever seen before. SPEAKER_13: Revealing, if you will, the first quasi-moon known in our solar system. SPEAKER_11: Quasi-meaning just like a small moon? SPEAKER_05: Quasi-meaning neither moon nor not moon. It's this mysterious in-between thing that's the first anyone has ever discovered anywhere in the universe. SPEAKER_09: Quasi-moon or quasimoon, which one is correct pronunciation. When you say it, I like quasi because it sounds like crazy. SPEAKER_05: And it really is kind of crazy because Paul and Sepo realize its orbit... SPEAKER_13: Takes it close both to the Earth and to the planet Mercury. It actually is quite a large distance from Venus at times. And not only that... I wonder where it came from. SPEAKER_05: Sepo actually computes Zeusvei's trajectory backwards in time. SPEAKER_09: And I found that 7,000 years ago... It was actually way closer to us. SPEAKER_05: And we flung it away. And now it's off dancing with Venus. It's this free spirit do-si-doing around the solar system. SPEAKER_11: So like, Latif, this is neat. But it does seem like just one sort of weird little pebble out there ping-ponging around in the whole solar system. Like, why has it captured your attention? Why do you care about it so much? SPEAKER_05: OK, so much of it goes back to the poster, right? The map. In your kids' room. SPEAKER_05: In my kids' room, but really, at least for me, in my head. And I think kind of in all of our heads. The solar system diagram that we all see in school. And it's like, you have the sun and then you have all the planets. And it's like a beautiful, perfect circle inside a circle, inside a circle, inside a circle, inside a circle. And they all have, like, tracks, right? They're rails. SPEAKER_11: Right. And it's predictable. You can keep your watch by it. Totally. Like, this is just Earth. This is the speed she goes. This is her rotation. She'll be back here at this station this time next year. Yeah, exactly. SPEAKER_05: It's a clock. We live in a clock, right? Right. And that's basically what scientists have thought of the solar system for millennia, right? Like, OK, so when I was in college, one of the things I studied was the history of astronomy. So you go back 2000 years, right? You have Aristotle and the Greeks. They were writing about perfect crystalline spheres, all nested one inside the other. And then 1500 years later, you have Copernicus and the whole scientific revolution. You move the sun to the center instead of the Earth. The circles become ellipses. They're more like ovals. The planets get their own moons. Still, it's a new version of the clock. Everything is still moving in graceful nested curves and predictable ways, right? And that's how I always envisioned everything moving up there. Right. But then Zusevé doesn't seem to fit neatly within that system. It's a weirdo. It's a rule breaker. SPEAKER_11: But don't you think Zusevé is still operating within a bigger clock? Like, it might still just be following different rules. Sure, there are rules. SPEAKER_05: There are definitely rules. But the thing is, Zusevé is following rules that we can never fully grasp. It's a three-way dancer, not a two-way dancer. So it's not on those predictable rails. And because of its polyamorous relationship with the sun and Venus, it actually presents sort of a mathematical conundrum known as the three-body problem. SPEAKER_11: Three-body problem. OK. SPEAKER_05: Basically, the three-body problem is this idea that if you're tracking mathematically trying to predict and understand these two bodies that are circling one another or orbiting one another, the gravity is pulling on one another, like the Earth and the moon or the sun and the Earth. That's totally doable. Very clear math. You can do that. OK. When you literally add one other thing, when there's three bodies, which is Zusevé is a third body, right? All of a sudden, the math becomes exponentially more difficult to the degree that SPEAKER_05: Mathematically, it's impossible to follow it. SPEAKER_05: You just cannot calculate where Zusevé is going to go next. SPEAKER_11: That is really counterintuitive. I would expect that like the right physicists or astronomers with the right math, it's like, OK, now you just also have sun pulling so it'll go. Right. You think it's like juggling balls. SPEAKER_05: Like it's like juggling three balls is not that much harder than juggling two balls. Right. Right. But this is like literally once you add the third ball, it's like every mathematician drops all the balls. SPEAKER_11: It like becomes unknowable. SPEAKER_05: Yeah. It's only possible to do it for a certain amount of time. It's like you can't predict it more than a little while out. Like, for example, we know that Zusevé is going to leave Venus at some point. Oh. But we don't know what it's going to do after that. It's a mystery. OK. SPEAKER_11: That is exciting. SPEAKER_05: And by the way, Zusevé is not the only unpredictable free spirit out there in the solar system. It's just the beginning. Because since 2002, scientists have started finding lots more of these quasimoons. SPEAKER_05: And these other quasimoons, some of them behave in even weirder ways than Zusevé does. Huh. SPEAKER_11: OK. SPEAKER_05: There are the Jovian Trojan asteroids. SPEAKER_05: Even though they're orbiting Jupiter, they don't circle it. SPEAKER_13: They actually stay ahead of or behind Jupiter as all of them go around the sun. There's a group which always stay in front of it and another group which always stay behind it. Like Secret Service agents or something. SPEAKER_13: Yeah, something like that. SPEAKER_05: Then there are horseshoe quasimoons, which look like they start out in front of the planet, SPEAKER_13: orbit partway around the planet, and then they stop and slow down, turn around, go back the other way. Wait, how do they stop and slow down and turn around? SPEAKER_13: It's the planet's gravity that causes this advance and retreat motion. SPEAKER_11: Weird. SPEAKER_05: It's going to get weirder here. There's some that do like a comma shape. Hmm. Like back and forth. And those ones are called tadpoles. SPEAKER_11: Ha ha, that's cute. SPEAKER_05: And Earth has a bunch of quasimoons too. We do? SPEAKER_11: How many have they found? SPEAKER_05: There's at least like seven of them, I think. What? SPEAKER_05: And all of these are all different. Like we have some Trojan moons, we have some horseshoe moons. SPEAKER_11: Wow. And so now when I think of that same map, it's like it's full of all these weirdo characters all dancing around like a Fantasia, you know? SPEAKER_05: Well, so it's not like we're not stuck in a clock. SPEAKER_11: We're what? We're like, we're in a club? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. SPEAKER_05: Exactly. It's like Venus hooked up with this random asteroid at a club. They're dancing together. SPEAKER_05: But then at the end of the night, they're going to part ways and who knows where they're going to go next. Yeah, there's so much unknown. SPEAKER_11: It's like you don't know who you're going to dance with next. SPEAKER_05: Right. And I would rather live in a club than in a clock. Yes. You know what I mean? SPEAKER_11: No, I feel that. SPEAKER_05: And there's one more thing actually. When I was talking to that Finnish scientist Seppo, I asked him what he thought about Zuse. Because I mean, like this is a guy who has spent his whole career mapping out where objects will go next in the solar system. SPEAKER_11: Like building the clock. He's been a clockmaker. That's right. SPEAKER_05: And so I was like, okay, what do you feel about Zuse? How do you feel about the fact that Zuse is so unpredictable? SPEAKER_09: Nothing. SPEAKER_05: So he was like, this is not a new idea. This is not a new thought for him. And in fact, he never really thought of the solar system as being knowable in the first place. If I could predict everything, then we would just believe that everything has been determined. SPEAKER_05: But it's not predetermined because, Seppo says, Zuseve is just an exaggerated version of what he has already known. Everything has gravity within them. SPEAKER_09: Everything in the universe is pulling on everything else. SPEAKER_05: The three-body problem, it does apply to Zuse, but it also applies everywhere. Which means, you know, in the long term, everything is impossible to predict. SPEAKER_09: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Because very tiny things can change everything. If I do this with my finger... SPEAKER_05: So at some point, Seppo, he just picks up his finger and he starts like waggling it side to side. SPEAKER_11: Like scolding you? SPEAKER_05: I had no idea what he was doing. And then he was like, look, just by doing that with my finger, just now... SPEAKER_09: I may have changed Earth's orbit. SPEAKER_05: I might have changed the Earth's orbit. SPEAKER_11: Wait, and is that really... That's like, that's not just hubris dream thinking. That's like a astrophysicist who understands the forces of gravity saying, I could have for real, real. SPEAKER_09: Yeah. It becomes obvious after some billions of years. Very tiny things affect everything when there is enough time. SPEAKER_05: And for me, like for Zuseve to enter my life in this totally random way, because some illustrator accidentally put it there, and it ended up in my kid's room. And then Zuseve itself was this, you know, promiscuous rock star that let me in on this secret that this place we live in is stranger and more connected and more filled with chaos and possibility than I ever thought. Like, that's what I want. And that's what I want my kid to go to bed thinking about every night. SPEAKER_11: Okay, that is pretty beautiful. Yeah, right? SPEAKER_11: That gave me the shintingles. Zuseve, right? Zuseve, right? Go, Zuseve. SPEAKER_05: Okay, so Lulu, this was supposed to be the end of the story. Felt like an end. SPEAKER_05: But it felt like three ends. But as I was reporting, this other possibility opened up, and I just could not resist. SPEAKER_05: It is a way to put Zuseve on the map for real. Well, what do you mean? I'll explain after the break. SPEAKER_11: Okay. How do you solve a problem? Like a Zuseve, how do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? You can't because gravity and we're going to follow her. Zuseve as she tears another hole in the universe into a new possibility. Okay, continue. SPEAKER_12: With Iowa and New Hampshire already in the bag, opponents of Donald Trump are hoping his run for office will be stymied by the 91 indictment. He's facing, but right now, none of this matters to him. SPEAKER_06: It's just free airtime. It's just an opportunity to be on CNN one more night of the week. He is very good at winning for losing on the next On the Media from WNYC. SPEAKER_12: Find On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. SPEAKER_05: Okay, so this is Radiolab. I'm Latif Nasr. I'm Lulu Miller. Back to Zuseve. So when I was talking to Paul Weigert, remember, who's the guy who helped figure out this was a quasimod. SPEAKER_05: He said this like one line, kind of not even what I was asking about, but like once he said it, I couldn't unhear it. SPEAKER_13: All asteroids when they're first seen are given what's called a provisional designation. SPEAKER_05: 2002 VE is just the name it got auto assigned when it was discovered. It's not its final name. SPEAKER_13: An asteroid can be named only after it is considered to be sufficiently well studied and sufficiently well understood. SPEAKER_05: And 2002 VE68 is now at that point. SPEAKER_13: Yes, but it has not yet been assigned one. And it hit me like 2002 VE68 is a terrible name. SPEAKER_05: It sounds like a car serial number. It's like, what if David Bowie was named 2002 VE68? It just doesn't feel right. SPEAKER_11: Yeah, it's not the right name for this beautiful creature in the sky. I hear that. SPEAKER_05: And that's when I got the idea that I, we have got to name it. SPEAKER_11: Wait, can you do that? SPEAKER_05: Well, so I asked Paul like, who's in charge of naming asteroids? SPEAKER_13: The privilege of suggesting a name goes to the discoverer. SPEAKER_03: It turns out that is me. So I went back to Brian Skiff, the guy who discovered Zuseve. In the early days, one was encouraged to be, you know, imaginative. He's discovered over 50 asteroids and is named a bunch of them. In the early 80s, we had four asteroids numbered consecutively. We named them for the Beatles. I have the letter from Ringo thanking me for his asteroid. SPEAKER_03: He told me about a bunch of other weirdly named asteroids. There's names of tropical flowers that a guy in Belgium was naming. There was a Swiss astronomer that named it for his favorite airline, which is Swiss Air. So random. An astronomer named one for his cat, Mr. Spock. Oh my god. SPEAKER_03: So the asteroid isn't named after the Star Trek character? Not named after the Star Trek character. Wow. SPEAKER_05: And hearing him say all these names, like, it just occurred to me. Do you think it would be possible to actually name this thing Zuseve? SPEAKER_11: Oh my god, yes, yes! SPEAKER_03: Uh, yes. I guess that is possible. I mean, it has to be. SPEAKER_11: You have to immortalize the typo. It needs to be Zuseve. SPEAKER_05: It should be Zuseve. It wants to be Zuseve. SPEAKER_11: There's no better name. SPEAKER_05: Like even just for search engine optimization, like there is nothing else called Zuseve out there. It's not going to get confused with anything else. SPEAKER_11: Yeah, yeah, yeah. SPEAKER_05: So now, theoretically, you just have to like send a request to the powers that be and then they will name it? Yes, yes. SPEAKER_05: And you are thinking favorably of naming it Zuseve? Oh, I wouldn't think of that at all. SPEAKER_05: You would not name it Zuseve? SPEAKER_03: No. Um, but- I think the answer is no. SPEAKER_05: The answer is no? Okay, can I make a case to you? And Lulu, as you know, I am nothing if not persistent. That's like my number one superpower. This is true. So, the illustrator mistook 2002 for Z-0. I tried to make the case and in the process I realized I actually had forgotten to tell Brian the whole story behind the name Zuseve, like with the poster and everything. And when I did- Oh, wow. SPEAKER_05: So it was a mistake. SPEAKER_05: It was a mistake. So he made an error, but I kind of fell in love with the error. Wow. SPEAKER_03: Yep, that's kind of interesting. SPEAKER_05: And there's nothing else in the whole world called Zuseve. SPEAKER_03: Zuseve. Wow. Would you like to name this asteroid Zuseve? SPEAKER_03: It'd be interesting if the story of this mistake could be compressed down to 300 characters. Brian was like, okay, it's a great story and all, but in order to submit the form to request SPEAKER_05: the name, everything you're telling me has to fit in 300 characters or less. Okay. Yeah. So I'm going to write the heck out of those 300 characters. Can I write the heck out of those 300 characters and send it to you to send it? SPEAKER_03: Yes. SPEAKER_05: Will you do that? SPEAKER_03: Yeah, sure. That's enough of a little twist that that would be very interesting. Right? SPEAKER_03: To see if it gets by the naming committee. SPEAKER_11: Wait, wait, naming committee? SPEAKER_03: Yeah. SPEAKER_05: So basically when Brian submits the name, it would then have to be reviewed by this group called the IAU. SPEAKER_03: The International Astronomical Union. SPEAKER_05: Those are the name keepers, name deciders. Yeah. SPEAKER_03: Well, a committee under the IAU gets to do this. It's called the Small Bodies Nomenclature Committee or something like that. Well, the official term is the working group small body nomenclature, which is a bit of SPEAKER_02: a mouthful. SPEAKER_05: Yeah. SPEAKER_02: I normally just call it the WGSBN. SPEAKER_05: It's very cool what you do. But I do think maybe you need a better name. So this is Gareth Williams. He's an astronomer who worked at Harvard for many years and is the secretary of that working group. Rumors that I'm an alien are not correct. SPEAKER_05: I'm glad you clarified. SPEAKER_02: I would typically work 100 plus hours a week. And so the rumor went around that I wasn't human. Anyway, so Gareth explained that the working group is... ...responsible for naming asteroids and comets. And it's made up of... ...eleven voting members. ...who are astronomers who live all over the world. We have a couple of members in the US. We have members in the Czech Republic, Russia, China, Japan, New Zealand and Uruguay. SPEAKER_05: As I understand it, it's their job to rubber stamp the name choice of the discoverer, who again is the one with the naming rights. SPEAKER_02: Well, we don't call them naming rights. We call them naming privileges. Because if it's a right, they could argue, well, you can't tell me what I want to name it. Right. Yes, we can, because it's a privilege and we have to vet what you want to say. SPEAKER_05: So I very quickly figured out that it's a lot more than just a rubber stamp and that Gareth and the entire working group take that vetting pretty seriously. SPEAKER_02: We don't allow political or military names unless the person, if it's a person... No names of products or companies. Are there like people wanting to name things after themselves? SPEAKER_05: You can't do that. SPEAKER_02: No names that are too generic. SPEAKER_05: No names of pets. No names to Spock. Caused a bit of controversy. Scientific animal names are okay though. Right. No names that are acronyms. Yeah. No names longer than 16 characters. Yes. And there are lots more. Oh boy. But there was one rule in particular that stuck out to me as a potential problem. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, any object that approached the Earth closely should have a mythological name because no person should have an object that could hit us named for them. SPEAKER_05: But for some reason that object did, you know, turn to Earth or destroy the space station or something like that. They don't want it all over the news that like 5-1-0-5-4 Ellen DeGeneres, you know, was the cause of that or whatever. Right. Anyway, so only mythological names. And even though there's no way Zuzwe is approaching us anytime soon, because it's within a certain range of Earth, it does fall under that rule. SPEAKER_05: And are there ever exceptions to that rule? SPEAKER_02: Not really. Okay. People try and say, can I slide on this? No, you can't. If we let you slide, we'll have to let everybody slide, which makes a mockery of the rule. SPEAKER_11: Oh, this is not looking good. Yeah. SPEAKER_05: But still, I thought to myself, I convinced Brian. I could definitely convince Gareth. Some people are just very persistent. And does persistence pay off, do you find? No. SPEAKER_02: No. No. SPEAKER_05: Persistence just annoys me. Okay. Interesting. Good to know. SPEAKER_02: Although I maintain my cool. SPEAKER_02: Okay. But internally, I'm seething. SPEAKER_05: Really? Oh my gosh. Okay. This is very good information to have. SPEAKER_11: You are so out of luck. You're doomed. SPEAKER_05: Maybe. But remember, he's just one person out of 11. Basically, it's a majority vote. Okay. So hypothetically, how does one make their case to these 11 people? Do you all gather together to discuss the proposals in some marbled hall somewhere? Ha, marbled hall. SPEAKER_02: No. We don't have formal meetings. They do everything online. Any member of the working group can log in to the website through a special interface and vote on the names whenever they feel like it. Got it. Basically, I just became even more convinced that it all goes back to that, you know, that SPEAKER_05: 300 character statement, because that's what all the members of the working group are looking at when they cast their vote. Okay. SPEAKER_11: So what did you end up writing? SPEAKER_05: Here is the sentence. Are you ready? Okay. So I actually did call Brian back to read it to him before he submitted it. Here it is. And it's actually, so the requirement is 360 characters. And this is actually only 287 characters. So we got even gravy if there's something you want to add in there, like whatever. There's room. Okay. Here's what I got. As the first quasi-moon ever discovered in the universe, this object deserves a name SPEAKER_05: as rare as its orbit. When artist Alex Foster drew this object on a solar system poster for kids, he misread the temporary name 2002 VE as Zuzwe, thus coining this original odd and memorable name. SPEAKER_03: That sounds fine. SPEAKER_05: Yeah? Oh yeah. SPEAKER_13: Yeah, we might, you know, change kids to children and, you know, very minor peaks, but other SPEAKER_03: than that. Okay, great. Easy. SPEAKER_05: SPEAKER_03: Done. It sounds fine to me. Do you think they'll do it? SPEAKER_03: What do you think is going to happen? SPEAKER_05: I guess I don't have a good feeling for that. Okay. So after that, Brian officially submitted the name proposal to the working group. SPEAKER_11: Okay. SPEAKER_05: And our sense was this kind of thing usually takes a couple months. SPEAKER_05: Right. That was about three and a half months ago. It took every fiber of my being to not email Gareth a million times. Yeah, you've got to sit on your hands. SPEAKER_11: You have to restrain your natural personality. Sitting on my hands, locked up my keyboard. SPEAKER_05: Don't spook him. SPEAKER_05: Yeah, totally. But then we scheduled... Oh my God. SPEAKER_11: Are you about to tell... Okay, okay, okay. Keep going. So we scheduled a time for when he would have the verdict. SPEAKER_05: Yep. SPEAKER_05: I hear you. Oh, great. I can hear you. So we got on the phone for the moment of truth. SPEAKER_02: Okay. I'm going to check my phone. Great. For the... I'm logged in on my phone to the voting site. Okay. Let me just check. Let me just refresh the page. Oh my gosh, this is so dramatic. SPEAKER_04: I'm holding my breath here. I've got to sign in again? SPEAKER_02: Oh. SPEAKER_11: Gareth, you're killing me. SPEAKER_02: All right, I have to log in again to the site. Annoyingly sign in. And this time I will save the password. Save. This is cruel and unusual. SPEAKER_02: Okay. As of yet, the decision on Zoosvy has not been finalized. Okay. SPEAKER_02: Okay, not been finalized. Meaning we don't have a resolution as of yet. Oh, okay. SPEAKER_11: Wait, they still don't know? They're still waffling over there in the Naming the Stars Land committee? SPEAKER_02: We're still waiting on two members to vote. And I sent them both emails last night and this morning. Thank you. Appreciate it. SPEAKER_11: Well, it turns out one of the people who hadn't voted yet had COVID, which is why they didn't SPEAKER_05: vote. SPEAKER_11: All right, you got to send them some soup. Okay. But in the soup, the alphabet letters can only spell Zoosvy. Subliminal messaging here. You got to send them a voicemail that forward says bluh, but backward says Zoosvy. Okay. What I did do instead was I just tried to get any information I could. SPEAKER_05: Can you tell us where the vote tally is now? I can't give you numbers. SPEAKER_02: Okay. Was it close? I can't be more specific. Like needle any intel I could out of him. SPEAKER_05: Have you already voted? Oh, yes. Can you tell me what you voted? No, I can't. Okay. Okay. All right. No problem. SPEAKER_11: Yeah. So basically we just have to wait. Oh, are you okay? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You don't have an answer. SPEAKER_05: I'm just patiently waiting on the edge of my seat. Not knowing what's ahead of you much like Zoosvy themselves. SPEAKER_05: Right. SPEAKER_11: Okay. SPEAKER_05: But he did actually say one thing. SPEAKER_05: Can you tell me in which direction it's leaning? It's leaning four. SPEAKER_11: Really? For Zoosvy? SPEAKER_05: Yes. SPEAKER_05: Hey. SPEAKER_11: Oh, legend. That's good news. We're very close. SPEAKER_05: Could go either way. Like any group, there's a conservative wing, there's a liberal wing, and there's a middle SPEAKER_02: of the road wing. Who are the two holdout votes? Where would you put them on the spectrum? SPEAKER_05: Middle of the road. Okay. Ah, swing votes. SPEAKER_11: Oh, they're the swing votes. Gosh. Well, so what does that make you feel? I mean, it just opens it back up. SPEAKER_05: It could go either way again. I don't know. It's like vote counting on the Supreme Court, basically. SPEAKER_11: Yeah, right. So we'll just keep hoping. And when are we going to find out? In a couple of weeks. SPEAKER_05: I'll come back at you with an update. SPEAKER_11: Okay. Yes. Call me any time of day or night. I am now invested. SPEAKER_05: This episode is reported by me, Latif Nasr, with help from Aketi Foster-Keys. It was produced by Sara Khari. Original music and sound design contributed by Sara Khari and Jeremy Bloom, with mixing help from Arianne Wack. Fact checking by Diane Kelly and edited by Becca Bressler. Special thanks to Larry Wasserman and everyone else at the Lowell Observatory, as well as to Rich Kramer. Thank you to the IAU and their small but mighty working group for small bodies nomenclature, as well as to the Bamboo Forest class of kindergartners and first graders who also have small bodies. Liz Landau, who you will remember, cracked the 2002 VE mystery. You can hear her work on NASA's Curious Universe podcast. Also wanted to give a special mention to illustrator Alex Foster, who gave us a bunch of those Solar System posters. They are beautiful and of course feature everyone's favorite Venus adjacent dot. The first 75 people to sign up for our annual membership program, The Lab, will receive a free poster. And I believe he even autographed them. You can sign up for that at radiolab.org slash join. For existing lab members, look out for a discount code in your exclusive feed. SPEAKER_01: Our lab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Cusick, Akati Foster-Keese, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz-Gutierrez, Sundu Nyam Sambaran, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Khare, Alyssa Jung Perry, Sarah Sandback, Arian Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Susanna calling from Washington, DC. Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simon Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.