Zoozve
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LULU: Hey there, Lulu here. First of all, I wanted to let you know about something very cool going on just beyond planet Earth, which is that it turns out that there is more than one moon orbiting around planet Earth. This is a somewhat recent discovery. There are a few littler moons dancing and orbiting and bobbing and weaving in different patterns. They are what's called quasi moons. And we need your help in naming one of them. This is real. The official governing bodies of space are handing the decision over to you to vote on what would be the best name for one of these moons. Earlier this year, we ran a contest and got thousands of submissions from around the world for what would make a great name for one of these moons and it is now down to the finalists, and we want you to go check them out and then vote on your favorite! Which you can do by heading on over to radiolab.org/moon, radiolab.org/moon. The winner will be chosen soon. And again, this is totally real. That is what that quasi-moon will be named till the end of time. So this is your chance to leave your imprint on the heavens one more time,
radiolab.org/moon. Uh go help name a moon.
LULU: Alright today we have an odyssey for you. We have a story that begins in a bedroom in California and then takes you all the way to outer space. It is such a fun ride and it is led by Radiolab co-host Latif Nasser who is so excited to tell you about it that that alone provides fun. So that's all I'm going to say. Buckle up, bring your space ice cream because we are leaving this planet to hear about something that for many, many years people only dreamed about. Okay, so here we go, I'm handing it off to Latif Nasser in conversation with me.
LATIF: We're gonna start with a mystery about the universe that I stumbled across in my kid's bedroom.
LULU: Oh!
LATIF: Okay, so about a year ago, I was putting my son to bed, my two-year-old son. You know that moment where it's like, okay it's time. Like, I'm—boop, in the crib, right?
LULU: Spike the football, run out of the room. [laughs]
LATIF: Right. Exactly. So as I was doing that I, like, looked up to the adjacent wall at this poster that we have up, a kid's poster of the solar system, 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 a moon."
LULU: Huh.
LATIF: But, like, what do I know? I don't know. You know?
LULU: Right.
LATIF: So I put my kid to bed.
LULU: Huh.
LATIF: So then I went back to my bedroom and then I just look up on my phone, does Venus have a moon?
LULU: Mm-hmm?
LATIF: And the first thing that comes up was a NASA website, and it says, "Venus does not have a moon."
LULU: Oh!
LATIF: Yeah.
LULU: Okay.
LATIF: But then the next morning after my son wakes up, I look 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.
LULU: Okay.
LATIF: Wait, I'm actually gonna have you read it. Okay, one second. Okay, so I'm unrolling the poster here.
LULU: Oh! Oh, it is in high detail.
LATIF: Right. Okay, and here: tell me what this moon is called.
LULU: Okay. I'm straining my eyes here. Zoozve? Zoozve?
LATIF: Yeah, Zoozve.
LULU: [laughs] Okay.
LATIF: When you see the name, I'm like, that's too weirdly specific to be an accident.
LULU: Right. That's not just like a poster designer being like, "A little dot would look cute here."
LATIF: Right.
LULU: Like, it's labeled. Okay.
LATIF: Right. Okay, so then I started googling Zoozve.
LULU: It's a nice googleable word.
LATIF: It's a very googleable word. And there's—there's nothing. Like, there were literally no results in English.
LULU: What?
LATIF: The results were all in Czech.
LULU: Huh.
LATIF: And they were about zoos. And I'm like, that's not the thing I'm looking for.
LULU: Mm-hmm.
LATIF: So I was like, okay where do I go from here?
LULU: Yeah.
LATIF: Uh Hi.
LIZ LANDAU: Hey, Latif. How are you?
LATIF: I'm good. How are you?
LATIF: So I called up my friend. Her name is Liz, Liz Landau.
LATIF: As just like a space nerd, but then also you as a professional space nerd.
LATIF: She has spent the last 10 years working with the media department at NASA.
LULU: Oh!
LATIF: And before that she used to be CNN's space correspondent.
LULU: Okay.
LATIF: And so I told her, I showed her the poster.
LIZ LANDAU: Duvet?
LATIF: Zoozve.
LIZ LANDAU: What? [laughs]
LATIF: It's, like, supposed to be a moon for Venus.
LIZ LANDAU: I've never heard of this.
LATIF: Okay. There are no moons of Venus, right?
LIZ LANDAU: Right.
LULU: Hmm!
LATIF: So at this point, the next logical step ...
LATIF: Your signature is very cryptic.
ALEX FOSTER: Yeah, I've changed it to just writing my name now, because ...
LATIF: ... was to track down the person who made the poster.
LULU: Oh. Oh, good. Okay.
LATIF: A guy named Alex Foster.
ALEX FOSTER: I'm an illustrator, and I'm from Margate, which is, like, the southeast coast of the UK.
LATIF: And I was basically like, "Did you put Zoozve on here as a joke?"
LATIF: Like, old mapmakers would make up fake towns. Or like a little hidden signature or something? Or is it your dog's name?
ALEX FOSTER: Um, 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.
LATIF: He says he found a detailed list of all the moons online, and there it was.
ALEX FOSTER: Z-O-O-Z-V-E.
LATIF: But then when I tried to find that same list, I couldn't find it. I mean, I was, like, scouring the internet. And nothing.
LULU: Huh! Weird!
LATIF: But then around that same time, I got this text from Liz.
LIZ LANDAU: So in my head, because you had said Zoozve ...
LATIF: Zoozve.
LIZ LANDAU: ... I was like, "Oh, it's Zoozve."
LATIF: It's Zoozve.
LIZ LANDAU: But then I sort of like, looked away for a minute 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-VE," and I found this object.
LATIF: What?
LULU: Oh!
LIZ LANDAU: Which I did not know existed before.
LULU: Okay. [laughs]
ALEX FOSTER: It's probably my writing as well. Like, I write in all caps. I thought it must have been "Z" rather than "2."
LATIF: And so when I told Alex about the mix-up, he realized he'd misread his own notes.
ALEX FOSTER: And I thought that the name "Zoozve" made more sense. [laughs]
LULU: [laughs]
LATIF: So anyway, okay, okay ...
LATIF: So long story short, there is a thing next to Venus, and it is called 2002-VE.
LIZ LANDAU: It was discovered in 2002. That's why it's called 2002-VE.
LATIF: 2002-VE68, if you're being technical.
LIZ LANDAU: Yes.
LULU: But it's not a moon of Venus?
LATIF: 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.
LULU: Okay.
LATIF: Because 2002-VE—which I'm just gonna keep calling Zoozve—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.
BRIAN SKIFF: [laughs] I mean, I actually have no formal training in astronomy, believe it or not.
BRIAN SKIFF: I just have a BS in physics, which I just barely got. [laughs]
LATIF: So this is Brian.
BRIAN SKIFF: I am Brian Skiff.
LATIF: He does in fact work in astronomy.
BRIAN SKIFF: At Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. I am a research assistant.
LATIF: Brian and his colleagues kicked off this brand new asteroid scavenger hunt. LONEOS, is that how you pronounce it?
BRIAN SKIFF: Yeah. The Lowell Observatory Near-Earth Object Search. NASA likes acronyms when you put in grant proposals.
LATIF: [laughs] And what they did was ...
BRIAN SKIFF: We refurbished a wide field camera of a special kind.
LATIF: Essentially their job was to scan ...
BRIAN SKIFF: A substantial fraction of the sky.
LATIF: Every single night.
LULU: Hmm.
LATIF: And what they were looking for were ...
BRIAN SKIFF: Potentially-hazardous asteroids.
LATIF: And it is in this nightly hunt that Brian discovers Zoozve.
LULU: Okay!
LATIF: It looks like an asteroid about the size of the Eiffel Tower.
LULU: Oh! Okay.
LATIF: Imagine something kind of gray and pockmarked and potato-shaped.
LULU: Oh!
BRIAN SKIFF: I had no notion that I had even discovered it.
LATIF: But fast forward a year, and ...
SEPPO MIKKOLA: [laughs] Can you see my face?
LATIF: I can see your face.
LATIF: ... Zoozve catches the attention of this other scientist.
SEPPO MIKKOLA: In Finland, my name is pronounced simply, Seppo Mikkola.
LATIF: Back in 2003, Seppo was an astronomer at the University of Turku, studying ...
SEPPO MIKKOLA: Celestial mechanics.
LATIF: Basically orbits.
SEPPO MIKKOLA: It's all very simple, actually.
LATIF: Seppo says that when he first noticed Zoozve, he realized it was in a ...
SEPPO MIKKOLA: Very strange-looking situation.
LATIF: As in its orbit didn't really make sense. So ...
PAUL WIEGERT: Hello?
LATIF: ... Seppo calls up his colleague, whose name is Paul.
SEPPO MIKKOLA: Paul Wiegert from Canada.
LATIF: Whom I also called.
LATIF: He's also an orbit-studying astronomer at the University of Western Ontario.
PAUL WIEGERT: Yes.
LATIF: And he says in order to fully understand how weird Zoozve's orbit is ...
PAUL WIEGERT: Let me think about the best way to explain this. So ...
LATIF: ... you have to understand this one fact about the solar system.
PAUL WIEGERT: It's an ironclad rule of our solar system ...
LATIF: That every celestial body moves in an orbit. And even though it can get gravitationally nudged around by other things near it, it primarily orbits one thing.
PAUL WIEGERT: And so the moons orbit planets, the planets orbit the Sun.
LATIF: 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.
PAUL WIEGERT: Yes.
LULU: Got it.
LATIF: Now Seppo and Paul look at Zoozve ...
PAUL WIEGERT: Making careful calculations, computer simulations and so forth.
LATIF: 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 ...
PAUL WIEGERT: Even though it's orbiting the Sun ...
LATIF: Venus is also keeping this tiny gravitational toehold on it. And because of that, while Zoozve's going around the Sun ...
PAUL WIEGERT: It actually stays relatively close to Venus and loops around it.
LATIF: ... it circles Venus too.
PAUL WIEGERT: To our amazement, it's orbiting both. Revealing, if you will, the first quasi-moon known in our solar system.
LULU: "Quasi" meaning just like a small moon?
LATIF: "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.
SEPPO MIKKOLA: Quasi-moon or qwazy moon. Which one is correct pronunciation?
LATIF: When you say it, I like 'qwazy' because it sounds like 'crazy.'
SEPPO MIKKOLA: [laughs]
LULU: 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—why has it captured your attention? Why do you care about it so much?
LATIF: Okay, so much of it goes back to the poster, right?
LULU: Hmm.
LATIF: The map.
LULU: In your kid's room.
LATIF: In my kid's room, but really at least for me in my head. 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?
LULU: Right. And it's predictable. You can keep your watch by it.
LATIF: Yeah, exactly. It's a clock. We live in a clock, right?
LULU: Right.
LATIF: Then Zoozve doesn't seem to fit neatly within that system. It's a weirdo. It's a rule-breaker.
LULU: But don't you think Zoozve's still operating within a bigger clock? Like, it might still just be following different rules.
LATIF: Sure. There are rules, there are definitely rules. But the thing is, Zoozve is following rules that we can never fully grasp.
SEPPO MIKKOLA: Mathematically, it's impossible to follow it.
LATIF: ... you just cannot calculate where Zoozve is gonna go next.
LULU: Hmm! Like, for example, we know that Zoozve is gonna leave Venus at some point.
LULU: Oh.
LATIF: But we don't know what it's gonna do after that. It's a mystery!
LULU: Okay, that is exciting.
LATIF: And by the way, Zoozve 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 quasi-moons.
LULU: Hmm!
LATIF: And these other quasi-moons, some of them behave in even weirder ways than Zoozve does.
LULU: Huh. Okay.
LATIF: There are ...
PAUL WIEGERT: The Jovian Trojan asteroids.
LATIF: Even though they're orbiting Jupiter, they don't circle it.
PAUL WIEGERT: 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.
LATIF: Like secret service agents or something.
PAUL WIEGERT: Yeah, something like that.
LATIF: Then there are horseshoe quasi-moons, which look like they ...
PAUL WIEGERT: Start out in front of the planet ...
LATIF: Orbit part way around the planet ...
PAUL WIEGERT: And then they stop and slow down ...
LATIF: Turn around, go back the other way.
LULU: Wait, how do they stop and slow down and turn around?
PAUL WIEGERT: [laughs] It's the planet's gravity that causes this advance and retreat motion.
LULU: Weird!
LATIF: It's gonna get weirder here. There's some that do, like, a comma shape.
LULU: Hmm.
LATIF: Like back and forth.
LULU: [laughs]
LATIF: And those ones are called tadpoles.
LULU: [laughs] That's cute!
LATIF: And Earth has a bunch of quasi-moons, too.
LULU: We do? How many have they found?
LATIF: There's at least, like, seven of them, I think.
LULU: What?
LATIF: And all of these are all different. Like, we have some Trojan moons, we have some horseshoe moons.
LULU: Wow!
LATIF: And so now, when I think of that same map, it's like full of all these weirdo characters, all dancing around like a fantasia, you know?
LULU: No, I feel that.
LATIF: And for me, like, for Zoozve 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 Zoozve itself was this, you know, 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.
LULU: Okay, that is pretty beautiful.
LATIF: Yeah. Right?
LULU: That gave me—that gave me the shin tingles.
LATIF: Zoozve, right?
LULU: Zoozve. Right. Go, Zoozve!
LATIF: [laughs] Okay. So Lulu, this was supposed to be the end of the story.
LULU: Mm-hmm. It felt like an end.
LATIF: It felt like three ends. But as I was reporting, this other possibility opened up.
LULU: Uh-huh?
LATIF: And I just could not—I could not resist. It is a way to put Zoozve on the map for real.
LULU: Whoa! What do you mean?
LATIF: I'll explain after the break.
LULU: Okay. [singing] How do you solve a problem like a Zoozve? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? You can't because gravity—and we're gonna follow Zoozve as she tears another hole in the universe into a new possibility. Okay. Continue.
LATIF: [laughs]
[BREAK]
LATIF: Okay. So this is Radiolab. I'm Latif Nasser.
LULU: I'm Lulu Miller.
LATIF: Back to Zoozve.
LULU: Mm-hmm.
LATIF: So when I was talking to Paul Wiegert, remember who's the guy who helped figure out this was a quasi moon ...
LULU: Yeah.
LATIF: ... 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.
PAUL WIEGERT: All asteroids, when they're first seen, are given what's called a 'provisional designation.'
LATIF: 2002-VE is just the name it got auto-assigned when it was discovered.
PAUL WIEGERT: Not its final name.
LATIF: And it hit me, like, 2002-VE68 is a—is a terrible name.
LULU: [laughs]
LATIF: It, like, sounds like a car serial number.
LULU: Yeah. It's not the right name for this beautiful creature in the sky. I hear that.
LATIF: And that's when I got the idea that I/we have gotta name it.
LULU: Wait, can you do that?
LATIF: Well, so I asked Paul, like, who's in charge of naming asteroids?
PAUL WIEGERT: The privilege of suggesting a name goes to the discoverer.
BRIAN SKIFF: It turns out that is me.
LATIF: So I went back to Brian Skiff, the guy who discovered Zoozve.
BRIAN SKIFF: In the early days, one was encouraged to be, you know, imaginative.
LATIF: He's discovered over 50 asteroids, and has named a bunch of them.
BRIAN SKIFF: In the early '80s, we had four asteroids numbered consecutively. We named them for the Beatles
LATIF: He told me about a bunch of other weirdly-named asteroids.
BRIAN SKIFF: There was a Swiss astronomer that named it for his favorite airline, which is Swiss Air.
LATIF: So random!
BRIAN SKIFF: An astronomer named one for his cat, Mr. Spock. [laughs]
LATIF: Oh my God! And hearing him say all these names, like, it just occurred to me ...
LATIF: Do you think it would be possible to actually name this thing Zoozve?
LULU: [laughs] Oh my God, yes. Yes!
BRIAN SKIFF: Yes. I guess that is possible.
LULU: I mean, it has to be—you have to immortalize the typo. It needs to be Zoozve.
LATIF: It should be Zoozve.
LULU: It wants to be Zoozve. There's no better name.
LATIF: So now theoretically, you just have to, like, send a request to the powers that be, and then they will name it?
BRIAN SKIFF: Yes. Yes.
LATIF: And you are thinking favorably of naming it Zoozve?
BRIAN SKIFF: Oh, I wouldn't think of that at all. [laughs]
LATIF: You would not name it Zoozve?
BRIAN SKIFF: No.
LATIF: Um, but ...
BRIAN SKIFF: I think the answer is no.
LATIF: The answer is no? Okay, can I make a case to you?
LATIF: And Lulu, as you know, I am nothing if not persistent. That's like my number one superpower.
LULU: [laughs] This is true.
LATIF: So ...
LATIF: The illustrator, he mistook 2002 for ZOOZ ...
LATIF: ... I tried to make the case. And in the process, I realized I actually—I had forgotten to tell Brian the whole story behind the name Zoozve, like, with the poster and everything. And when I did ...
BRIAN SKIFF: Oh! Wow!
LATIF: It was a mistake.
BRIAN SKIFF: Wow! [laughs]
LATIF: It was a mistake. So he made an error, but I kind of fell in love with the error.
BRIAN SKIFF: Wow. Yeah, that's kind of interesting.
LATIF: And there's nothing else in the whole world called Zoozve.
BRIAN SKIFF: Zoozve! Wow.
LATIF: Would you like to name this asteroid Zoozve?
BRIAN SKIFF: It would be interesting if the story of this mistake could be compressed down to 300 characters.
LATIF: Brian was like, "Okay, it's a great story and all, but in order to submit the form to request the name, everything you're telling me has to fit in 300 characters or less."
LATIF: Okay. We can do that?
BRIAN SKIFF: Yeah, sure. That's enough of a little twist that that would be very interesting ...
LATIF: Right?
BRIAN SKIFF: ... to see if it gets by the naming committee.
LULU: Wait, wait, naming committee?
LATIF: Yeah. So basically, when Brian submits the name, it would then have to be reviewed by this group called the IAU.
BRIAN SKIFF: The International Astronomical Union.
LATIF: Those are the name keepers. Name deciders.
BRIAN SKIFF: Yeah
GARETH WILLIAMS: Well, the official term is the Working Group: Small Body Nomenclature. Which is a bit of a mouthful.
LATIF: Yeah.
GARETH WILLIAMS: So we normally just call it the WGSBN.
LATIF: It's very cool what you do you, but I do think maybe you need a better name?
GARETH WILLIAMS: [laughs]
LATIF: So this is Gareth Williams. He's an astronomer who worked at Harvard for many years, and is the secretary of that working group. so Gareth explained that the working group is ...
GARETH WILLIAMS: Responsible for naming asteroids and comets.
LATIF: And it's made up of ...
GARETH WILLIAMS: 11 voting members.
LATIF: Who are astronomers who live all over the world.
LATIF: 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.
GARETH WILLIAMS: Basically, it's a majority vote.
LATIF: 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?
GARETH WILLIAMS: [laughs] Marbled hall. No, we don't have formal meetings.
LATIF: They do everything online.
GARETH WILLIAMS: 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.
LATIF: Got it.
LATIF: Basically, I just became even more convinced that it all goes back to that—you know, that 300-character statement.
LULU: Hmm.
LATIF: Because that's what all the members of the working group are looking at when they cast their vote.
LULU: Okay, so what did you end up writing?
LATIF: Here is the sentence. Are you ready?
BRIAN SKIFF: Okay.
LATIF: So I actually did call Brian back to read it to him before he submitted it.
LATIF: Here it is. And it's actually—so the requirement is 360 characters.
BRIAN SKIFF: Oh, okay.
LATIF: 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 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 Zoozve, thus coining this original, odd and memorable name."
BRIAN SKIFF: That sounds fine.
LATIF: Yeah?
BRIAN SKIFF: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we might, you know, change "kids" to "children" and, you know, very minor tweaks. But other than that ...
LATIF: Okay, great. Easy. Done.
BRIAN SKIFF: It sounds fine to me.
LATIF: Do you think they'll—do you think they'll do it? What do you think is gonna happen?
BRIAN SKIFF: I guess I don't have a good feeling for that.
LATIF: Okay.
LATIF: So after that, Brian officially submitted the name proposal to the working group.
LULU: Okay.
LATIF: And our sense was this kind of thing usually takes a couple months.
LULU: Right.
LATIF: That was about three-and-a-half months ago. But then we scheduled ...
LULU: Oh my God, are you about to—are you about tell—okay, okay, okay. Keep going.
LATIF: So we scheduled a time for when he would have the verdict.
LULU: Mm-hmm.
GARETH WILLIAMS: Yep. I hear you.
LATIF: Oh, great. I can hear you.
LATIF: So we got on the phone for the moment of truth.
GARETH WILLIAMS: Okay, let me just check my phone.
LATIF: Great.
GARETH WILLIAMS: For the—I'm logged in on my phone to the voting site.
LATIF: Okay.
GARETH WILLIAMS: Let me just check—let me just refresh the page.
LATIF: Oh my gosh, this is so dramatic! I'm like—I'm—I'm holding my breath here.
GARETH WILLIAMS: Well, I'm very pleased to announce that the Working Group for Small Body Nomenclature has approved the name Zoozve.
LULU: Oh!
LATIF: [laughs] Oh my God!
LULU: Are you serious?
LATIF: Wow!
LULU: Are you serious?
LATIF: Yeah. They're naming it Zoozve.
BRIAN SKIFF: Oh, wow! Great!*
LATIF: I also just broke the news to Brian Skiff, the discoverer of Zoozve, who helped us propose the name.
BRIAN SKIFF: Well, that's a great little coup on everyone's part.
LATIF: And ...
ALEX FOSTER: Oh good. That's so cool!
LATIF: Yeah.
LATIF: I also called Alex Foster.
LULU: The poster guy?
LATIF: The poster guy.
LULU: Oh!
LATIF: To be like, your mistake is now etched in the heavens.
LULU: Yeah.
LATIF: Forever.
LULU: Oh!
LATIF: Now having gone through what we went through, that retroactively makes the poster correct.
ALEX FOSTER: Oh, that's amazing. Wow!
LATIF: [laughs]
LULU: How do you feel?
LATIF: I mean, I feel awesome. 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 name, so that feels right.
LATIF: How do you feel?
GARETH WILLIAMS: I feel happy. I think it's a suit—I think it's a good name.
LATIF: Can you tell me what you voted?
GARETH WILLIAMS: Well, since it's now been approved I can say that I voted for it.
LATIF: I want to—I just want to give you a big hug right now.
GARETH WILLIAMS: A virtual hug it will have to be, since we're quite a few miles apart. [laughs]
LATIF: Yes. Yes.
LATIF: Has anything ever been named after a typo before?
GARETH WILLIAMS: After a typo? Well, that's an interesting one. I'm having a hard time thinking of a prior example of a typo.
BRIAN SKIFF: Gee whiz, I can't think of anything right offhand either. [laughs]
LULU: Wow, that is wild! [laughs] 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.
LATIF: Yup.
LULU: Alright. That'll do it for today. Biggest thanks to Latif Nasser. Biggest thanks to Zoozve. And biggest thanks to you for listening. We'll be dropping back down to this lumpy old planet of ours to discover what wild secrets we can find there. Bye.
LULU: This episode is reported by me, Latif Nasser, with help from Ekedi Fausther-Keeys. It was produced by Sarah Qari. Original music and sound design contributed by Sarah Qari 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 kindergarteners and first graders who also have small bodies. Liz Landau who you will remember cracked the 2002 V.E. Mystery. You can hear her work on NASA's Curious Universe podcast. Also wanted to give a special mention to illustrator Alex Foster.
EMMA: Hi, I’m Emma and I live in Portland, Maine. Radiolab 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, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Valentina Powers, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.
SUSANNA: Hi, this is Susanna calling from Washington, DC. Leadership support
for Radio Lab 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 Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan
Foundation.