Zoozve
2024-01-26 00:55:52
Radiolab is on a curiosity bender. We ask deep questions and use investigative journalism to get the answers. A given episode might whirl you through science, legal history, and into the home of someone halfway across the world. The show is known for innovative sound design, smashing information into music. It is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser.
You're listening to Radiolab from WNYC.
I know nothing except one very weird word.
That's right, okay, so hey, this is Latif Nasser.
And Lulu Miller?
This is Radiolab and today, all right.
I'm ready for your story-wares.
We're going to start with a mystery about the universe that I stumbled across in my kid's bedroom.
Oh.
Okay, so about a year ago, I was putting my son to bed, my two-year-old son. And you know, that moment where it's like, Okay, it's time, like, I'm boop in the crib, right?
Spike the football run out of the room.
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.
Real on brand for the Nasser-Mensch family.
Yeah, very on brand. And I would say it's 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, noticed 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.
Huh.
But like, what do I know? I don't know, you know, right? So I put my kid to bed.
Huh? So then I went back to my bedroom and then I just look up on my phone. Does Venus have a moon?
Mm hmm.
And the first thing that comes up was a NASA website, and it says Venus does not have a moon. Oh yeah.
Okay.
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. Okay, wait, I'm actually going to have you read it.
Okay, one second, Okay, so I'm unrolling the poster here, oh.
Oh, it is in high detail, right?
Okay, in here, tell me what this moon is called.
Okay, I'm straining my eyes here.
Zuzve zuzvi.
Yeah, zuzve.
Okay.
When you see the name, I'm like, that's too weirdly specific to be an accident.
Right, that's not just like a poster designer being like a little dot would look cute here, right?
It's labeled Okay, right?
Okay, so then I started googling zuzve.
It's a nice, Google-able word.
It's a very Google-able word, and there's nothing like there were literally no results in English. What?
The results were all in Czech and they were about zoos. And I'm like, that's not the thing I'm looking for, so I was like, Okay, yeah.
Where do I go from here?
Uh, hi, hey Latif, how are you? I'm good, so I called up my friend.
Her name is Liz Liz Landau. It's just like a space nerd, but then also you as a professional space nerd. She has spent the last 10 years working with the media department at NASA. Oh.
And before that, she used to be CNN's space correspondent.
Okay.
And so I told her, I showed her the poster, Zuzve, Zuzve, what it's like supposed to be a moon for Venus.
I've never heard of those.
Okay, there are no moons of Venus, right, right?
Hmm.
So, at this point, the next logical step? Your signature is very cryptic.
Yeah, I've changed it to just writing my name now.
Was to track down the person who made the poster.
Oh, oh, good, okay.
A guy named Alex Foster.
I'm an illustrator and I'm from Margate, which is like the southeast coast of the UK.
And I was basically like, did you put Zuzve on here? As a joke? Old map makers would make up fake towns, or like a little hidden signature or something, or is it your dog's name?
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.
He says he found a detailed list of all the moons online and there it was.
Z-o-o-z-v-e.
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.
Huh, weird.
But then, around that same time, I got this text from Liz.
So in my head, because you had said Zuzve, I was like, Oh, it's Zuzve. But then I sort of, like, looked away from it. And I looked at it again, and I was like, 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 know existed before.
It's probably my writing as well, like I write in all caps. I thought it must have been said rather than two.
And so when I told Alex about the mix-up, he realized he'd misread his own notes.
And I thought the name Zuzve made more sense.
Anyway, OK, OK. So, long story short, there is a thing next to Venus, and it is called 2002-V-E.
It was discovered in 2002.
That's why it's called 2002-V-E.
2002-V-E-68. If you're being technical, yes.
But it's not a moon of Venus.
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. Because 2002-V-E, which I'm just going to keep calling. Zuzve, 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.
OK, so, we humans first discovered Zuzve thanks to a cultural moment of astronomical angst.
March 23rd, 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 4581 asclepius. NASA scientists report that a huge asteroid got a close team close.
Mankind's closest encounter with a deadly asteroid.
Around that same time, geologists find evidence in the Yucatan that it was an asteroid gigantic asteroid speeding object that wiped out the dinosaurs. Then, just a couple years later.
A comet named Shoemaker-Levy 9 rained down on Jupiter. Scientists actually watched for the first time a comet smash into a planet.
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.
Turned into, only a matter of time, an all-out asteroid frenzy.
The comet we discovered is the size of New York City.
In the 90s, you get asteroid blockbusters like Deep Impact.
Oh, oh, and armageddon. The United States government just asked us to save the world.
Yeah.
Anybody want to say no?
Not to mention Judgment Day asteroid hatey or mad a horde of people.
Great movies and TV.
Nice.
And all the while.
Our movie is very much based on facts.
Could the latest sci-fi blockbuster become facts?
People keep spotting real-life asteroids and comets, the comet of the century, Yaku Takei.
Comet Hill Asteroid 1997 XF-11..
And the anxiety just compounds. If it had struck, it would have had the effect of 40,000..
Nearly 2 million.
300 million, 500 million Hiroshima-type bombs.
2028.
That could be our last time on Earth.
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, really, because that's basically what happens next. I just have a B.S. 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.
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, Aesilonios.
Is that how you pronounce it? 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, 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 Zuzwe.
Okay.
It looks like an asteroid about the size of the Eiffel Tower.
Oh, okay.
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, Zuzwe seems so unremarkable that Brian kind of mentally crosses it off his list of things to worry about. And I had no notion that I had even discovered it forgets about it entirely.
Huh.
But fast forward a year and.
Can you see my face?
I can see your face. Zuzwe catches the attention of this other scientist.
In Finland, my name is pronounced simply Seppo Mikkola.
Back in 2003, Seppo was an astronomer at the University of Turku studying.
Celestial Mechanics.
Basically, orbit.
It was very simple, actually.
Seppo says that when he first noticed Zuzwe, he realized it was in a.
Very strange-looking situation.
As in its orbit, didn't really make sense, so Seppo calls up his colleague, whose name is Paul.
Whom I also called.
Not huffing and puffing too much from coming up the stairs. And I think I'm good to go. He's also an orbit-studying astronomer at the University of Western Ontario. Yes, and he says, in order to fully understand how weird Zuzwe's orbit is,....
Let me think about the best way to explain this, so.
You have to understand this one fact about the solar system It's an ironclad rule of our solar system 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. 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?
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? 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 Zuzwe.
Making careful calculations, computer simulations and so forth. 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 Zuzwe is going around the sun.
It actually stays relatively close to Venus and loops around it. It circles Venus too, to our amazement, it's orbiting both.
So Zuzwe is like in a poly relationship with the Sun and Venus, yeah.
Which, by the way, nobody has ever seen before revealing, if you will, the first quasi-moon known in our solar system.
Quasi, meaning just like a small moon.
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.
Quasi-moon or crazy moon? This one is correct pronunciation.
When you say it, I like crazy because it sounds like crazy, and it really is kind of crazy. Because Paul and Seppo realize. Its orbit takes a 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 wondered where it came from.
Seppo actually computes Zuzwe's trajectory backwards in time.
And I found that 7,000 years ago.
It was actually way closer to us 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.
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?
Okay, so much of it goes back to the poster, right? The map.
In your kid's room.
In my kid's 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.
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, 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, okay, so when I was in college, one of the things I studied was the history of astronomy. So you go back 2,000 years, right? You have Aristotle and the Greeks they were writing about perfect crystalline spheres, all nested one inside the other. And then 1,500 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, in predictable ways, right? And that's how I always envisioned everything moving up there.
Right?
But then Zuzwe doesn't seem to fit neatly within that system. It's a weirdo, it's a rule breaker.
But don't you think Zuzwe's still operating within a bigger clock? It might still just be following different rules.
Sure, there are rules, there are definitely rules, but the thing is, Zuzwe 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.
Three-body problem, okay?
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, their 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 that you can do that.
Okay.
When you literally add one other thing, when there's three bodies, which is Zuzwe, is a third body, right? All of a sudden, the math becomes exponentially more difficult, to the degree that mathematically.
It's impossible to solve it.
You just cannot calculate where Zuzwe is going to go next.
Hmm, that is really counterintuitive. I would expect that the right physicists or astronomers with the right math. It's like, Okay, now you just also have sun pulling, so it'll go....
Right, you think it's like juggling balls? 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.
It becomes unknowable.
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, for example. We know that Zuzwe is going to leave Venus at some point, but we don't know what it's going to do after that. It's a mystery.
Okay, that is exciting.
And by the way, Zuzwe 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, and these other quasimoons. Some of them behave in even weirder ways than Zuzwe does.
Huh, okay.
There are Jovian Trojan asteroids. Even though they're orbiting Jupiter, they don't circle it, 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.
Yeah, something like that. Then there are horseshoe quasimoons, which look like they start out in front of the planet, 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?
It's the planet's gravity that causes this advance and retreat motion. It's gonna get weirder here. There's some that do like a comma shape like back and forth, and those ones are called tadpoles.
That's cute.
And Earth has a bunch of quasimoons, too, we do.
How many have they found?
There's at least like seven of them, I think, what? And all of these are all different. Like, we have some Trojan moons, we have some horseshoe moons.
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?
Well, so it's not like we're not stuck in a clock, we're what we're in a club.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. It's like Venus hooked up with this random asteroid. At a club, they're dancing together, but then at the end of the night they're gonna part ways.
And who knows where they're gonna go next?
Yeah, there's so much unknown, it's like, you don't know who you're gonna dance with next.
Right, and I would rather live in a club than in a clock, yes.
You know what I mean? No, I feel that.
And there's one more thing actually, when I was talking to that Finnish scientist Seppo.
I asked him what he thought about Tuesday. 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.
Yeah, like building the clock, he's been a clockmaker.
That's right. And so I was like, OK, what do you feel about Zuzwe? How do you feel about the fact that Zuzwe is so unpredictable?
Nothing.
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.
But it's not predetermined because Seppo says Zuzwe is just an exaggerated version of what he has already known.
Everything in the universe is pulling on everything else. The three-body problem. It does apply to Zuzwe, but it also applies everywhere, which means, you know, in the long term, everything is impossible to predict.
Yeah, yeah, that's right, because very tiny things can change everything if I do this with my finger.
So at some point, seppo, he just he picks up his finger and he starts like waggling it side to side.
Like, scolding you.
I had no idea what he was doing and then he was like, look, just by doing that with my finger just now.
I may have changed the Earth's orbit.
I might have changed the Earth's orbit.
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, yeah. It becomes obvious after some billions of years.
Very tiny things affect everything when there is enough time.
And for me, like, like for Zuzwe 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 Zuzwe 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. That's what I want, and that's what I want my kid to go to bed thinking about every night.
OK, that is pretty beautiful.
Yeah, right.
That gave me, that gave me the shin tingles.
Zuzwe Right?
Zuzwe, right go zuzwe.
OK, so Lulu, this was supposed to be the end of the story.
Felt like an end.
But it felt like three ends. But as I was reporting this, other possibility opened up and I just could not, I could not resist. It is a way to put Zuzwe on the map for real.
Well, what do you mean?
I'll explain after the break.
Ok.
How do you solve a problem like a zuzwe? how do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? You can't because gravity, and we're going to follow Zuzwe as she tears, another hole in the universe into a new possibility. OK, continue.
On this week's On the Media, what happened to the offbeat, irreverent, speaking, truth to power alt-weeklies that used to populate newsstands across the country?
The voice was their guide to life from people who cared about what they were covering. With such intensity that there were fistfights and brawls inside the paper. That's gone.
The End of an Era? On this week's On the Media from WNYC Find on the Media wherever you get your podcasts.
OK, so this is Radiolab, I'm Latif Nasser.
I'm Lula Miller.
Back to Zuzwe.
Mm hmm.
So when I was talking to Paul Wiegert, remember who's the guy who helped figure out this was the Quasimodo? Yeah, 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. All asteroids, when they're first seen, are given what's called a provisional designation.
2002 VE is just the name it got auto assigned when it was discovered, not its final name. Oh, an asteroid can be named only after it is considered to be sufficiently well studied and sufficiently well understood, and 2002 VE68 is now at that point.
Yes, but it has not yet been assigned one. And it hit me like, 2002 VE68 is a is a terrible name. It like, sounds like a car serial number. It's like, what if David Bowie was named 2002 VE68? It just doesn't feel right.
Yeah, it's not the right name for this beautiful creature in the sky, I hear that.
And that's when I got the idea that I we have got to name it.
Wait, can you do that?
Well, so I asked Paul, Like, who's in charge of naming asteroids? The privilege of suggesting a name goes to the discoverer. It turns out that is me. So I went back to Brian Skiff, the guy who discovered Zizve. In the early days. One was encouraged to be, you know, imaginative.
He's discovered over 50 asteroids and has 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, 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 is 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, so the asteroid isn't named after the Star Trek character? Not named after the Star Trek character. Wow. 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? Zizve?
Oh my god, yes, yes.
Yes, I guess that is possible.
I mean, it has to be you have to immortalize the typo.
It needs to be zizve, it should be zizve.
It wants to be zizve, there's no better name.
Like, even just for search engine optimization, like there is nothing else called Zizve out there, it's not going to get confused with anything else.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So now, theoretically, you just have to, like, send a request to the powers that be, and then they will name it. Yes, yes, and you are thinking favorably of naming it Zizve. Oh, I wouldn't think of that at all. you would not name it Zizve.
No.
I think the answer is no.
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 Zed.
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. Zizve, like with the poster and everything. And when I did, it was a mistake.
It was a mistake, so he made an error, but I kind of fell in love with the error.
Wow, yeah, that's kind of interesting, and there's nothing else in the whole world called zizve, zizve.
Would you like to name this asteroid Zizve? It'd be interesting if the story of this mistake could be compressed down to 300 characters. Brian was like, Okay, look, 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. Yeah, I can 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?
Yes, we could do that. Yeah, sure, that's enough of a little twist, that that would be very interesting, right?
To see if it gets by the naming committee.
Wait, wait naming committee.
Yeah, so basically, when Brian submits the name, it would then have to be reviewed by this group called the IAU, the International Astronomical Union. Those are the name keepers, name deciders, yeah.
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 a mouthful. Yeah, so we normally just call it the WGSBN.
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.
I'm glad you clarified.
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.
11 voting members.
Who are astronomers who live all over the world?
We have a couple of members in the U.S. we have members in the Czech Republic, Russia, China, Japan, New Zealand and Uruguay.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can't do that.
No names that are too generic, no names of pets.
Mr 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.
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.
If, 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, 51054, Ellen DeGeneres, you know, was the cause of that, or whatever anyway. So only mythological names. And even though there's no way Zuzve is approaching us anytime soon, because it's within a certain range of Earth, it does fall under that rule.
Oh.
And are there ever exceptions to that rule?
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.
Oh, that's not looking good.
Yeah, 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, no.
No, persistence just annoys me.
Okay, interesting, good to know.
Although I maintain my cool.
Okay.
But internally, I'm seething.
Really, oh my gosh, okay. This is very good information to have.
You are so out of luck, you're doomed.
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?
Oh, marbled Hall. No, we don't have formal meetings.
They do everything online.
Any member of the working group can log into 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 300 character statement. Because that's what all the members of the working group are looking at when they cast their vote, okay?
So what did you end up writing?
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. oh okay, 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 quasimoon 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 Zuzve, thus coining this original, odd and memorable name.
That sounds fine.
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. We might, you know, change kids to children, and, you know, very minor, okay?
But other than that.
Okay, great, easy done. It sounds fine to me.
Do you think they'll do it? What do you think is going to happen? 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.
Okay.
And our sense was, this kind of thing usually takes a couple months, 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, you have to restrain your natural personality.
Sitting on my hands, locked up my keyboard, don't spook him. Yeah, totally. But then we scheduled. Oh my God.
Are you about to tell?
Okay, okay, okay, keep going.
So we scheduled a time for when he would have the verdict.
I hear you.
Oh, great, I can hear you. So we got on the phone for the moment of truth.
Okay, let me just 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, I'm holding my breath here.
I've got to sign in again.
Gareth, you're killing me.
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.
Okay, as of yet, the decision on Zoos V has not been finalized.
Okay, okay, it's not been finalized.
Meaning we don't have a resolution as of yet.
Oh, okay, wait, they still don't know.
They're still waffling over there in the Naming the Stars land.
It's.
We're still waiting on two members to vote, and I sent them both emails last night and this morning.
Thank you, appreciate it. Well, it turns out one of the people who hadn't voted yet had Covid, which is why they didn't vote.
All right, you got to send them some soup, okay? But in the soup, the alphabet letters can only spell zoos v. Subliminal messaging.
Here you got to send them a voicemail that forward says, but backward says Zoos V.
Okay, what I did do instead was I just tried to get any information I could. Can you tell us where the vote tally is now?
I can't give you numbers.
Okay, was it close?
I can't be more specific.
Like needle, any intel I could out of him. Have you already voted?
Oh, yes.
Can you tell me what you voted? No, I can't. Okay, okay, all right.
No problem, yeah, so basically, we just have to wait.
Oh, are you okay? Logic? are you? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, you don't have an answer.
I'm just patiently waiting on the edge of my seat.
Not knowing what's ahead of you. Much like Zoos V, right themselves.
But he did actually say one thing, Can you tell me if it's in which direction it's leaning?
It's leaning four.
Really for Zoos v. Yes, hey.
That's good news, we're very close, could go either way.
Like any group, there's a conservative wing, there's a liberal wing, and there's a middle of the road.
Who are the two holdout votes? Where would you put them on the spectrum?
Middle of the road.
Okay, huh? Swing votes?
Oh, they're the swing gosh. Well, so what does that make you feel?
I mean, it just opens it back up, it could go either way again. I don't know. Yeah, it's like vote counting on the Supreme Court, basically.
Yeah, right, so we'll just keep hoping, and when are we going to find out?
In a couple of weeks, I'll come back at you with an update, okay?
Yes, call me any time of day or night. I am now invested.
This week, on the New Yorker Radio Hour Why Republicans won't brag about overturning abortion rights? Donald Trump has basically said, Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would like to take credit for getting rid of Roe versus Wade, but also not pay a political price for it. The GOP, abortion and the new battle over IVF. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, it's Luvdiv, I'm Lulu, this is Radiolab and Lulu. Wait, yes.
Are we here? Are we here for news?
So we are here for news. Okay, so okay. So, as you know, I have to do the, do the, do the.
Previously on Okay.
You want me to do it, sure?
Yeah, you do. sure, sure, sure, okay.
So basically, Zuzwe is this mischievous piece of space rock that is neither moon, no, 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.
Excellent.
Thank you.
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 VE 68. Like, it needs a better name, and, of course, the natural name felt like it should be Zuzwe.
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.
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. Okay, we're still waiting on two members to vote.
But actually left right, hello.
I can hear you.
Can you hear me? But now, a little over a week later, just got off the phone with Gareth.
Oh, okay, votes are all in.
Votes are all in okay and.
Well, I'm very pleased to announce that the Working Group Small Body Nomenclature has approved the name ZuZwE.
Oh my god.
Are you serious?
Wow, are you serious? Yeah, they're naming it zuzwe.
Oh, wow, great.
I also just broke the news to Brian Skiff, the discoverer of Zuzwe, who helped us propose the name.
Well, that's a great little coup on everyone's part.
And.
Oh good, that's so cool.
Yeah, I also called Alex Foster.
A poster guy.
A poster guy to be like, like, your mistake is now etched in the heavens. Yeah, forever, oh.
Now, having gone through what we went through, that retroactively makes the poster correct.
Oh, that's amazing, wow.
How do you feel?
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 that feels right.
How do you feel?
I feel happy, I think it's a suit, I think it's a good name.
Can you tell me what you voted?
Well, since it's now been approved, I can say that I voted for it.
I want to, I just want to give you a big hug right now.
A virtual hug will have to be since we're quite a few miles apart.
Yes, yes, oh my god.
Wait, but wasn't there like that? It had to be a myth. how did? how did it get past that rule, the mythological rule?
Yeah.
So that was the sticking point for the 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 because of that rule.
But he also said that there are circumstances under which non-mythological names would be accepted, if there's a good reason why.
I didn't know that.
And the cute story behind this name, I think, swayed the members who voted for it. Yes, but we don't want to encourage, you know, a lot of non-mythological names.
And in the end, he says.
It sort of just scraped by.
Zuzve passed by a narrow margin. Huh? Has anything ever been named after a typo before?
After a typo, Oh, that's an interesting one. I'm having a hard time thinking of a prior example of a typo. You is. I can't think of anything right offhand either.
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.
That that is now immortalized and will outlast all of us in the sky.
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.
Both Seppo Mikkola and Paul Wiegert did the real work, of course, identifying this thing.
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.
I hope people get the idea that, you know, people do their little bits and pieces incrementally, and and you know, it works out.
Well, it sounds like it's astronomy is a team sport. Yeah, and then when I was talking to Alex Foster.
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 like, so silly that this could happen.
I feel like I did, I didn't do anything like, What did I do? I did a tiny thing here. 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 Zuzwe lives in, right? Where where bodies move through space and exert a web of invisible and often unknowable forces on each other. Leading to a universe where things happen that you just cannot predict.
Wow.
But OK, so so that's actually only half of the news.
OK, what's the other half?
So it was so fun, it was so exciting to name a quasimoon of Venus. MM Hmm, 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 quasimoon of Earth.
No, so we're going to do a contest, no, we're going to do an International Astronomical Union Radio Lab fan contest.
So that listeners can name a quasimoon.
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.
Oh my goodness, wait, this is awesome.
Yeah.
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.
It is not that.
Ok.
No, this is for real. So basically, what happened is Gareth, who you heard in the episode, the guy from the IAU? He showed me the quasimoons of Earth that have yet to be named, so they're like, I don't know, seven to 12 quasimoons. And he gave me three to pick from, and he showed me, like little gifs of the orbits of each one.
And basically, I basically picked the weirdest one, like in the spirit of this thing, doing its own weird dance.
Moving to the beat of its own drum.
Moving to the beat of its own drum, like, I picked the weirdest one, so weird, in fact, that it's like, it's like, imagine the shape of a saddle.
Ok.
And then imagine you're like, that saddle is on, like a like, a Bucking Bronco or something, and if you had, like, motion capture dots on the Bucking Bronco saddle. As it was moving around, like, and then, and that thing was circling earth like some avant garde artist made a saddle that no one could actually ride.
OK, so I'm feeling like words are like, it's frisky, it's wild, it's, it's untamed.
Oh my God, how would you describe this?
OK, so it's showing me OK, neat.
So in the middle, that's the earth.
Oh, ok.
Hold on, let me keep looking. Oh, it's OK.
It's weird, right?
So the middle of it is the Earth.
Yeah, that's it relative to us.
I think I can describe it.
How would you describe it?
Let me finish watching it. What I'm watching is this animation of like a pink line of its orbit that's slowly kind of building over time. And it's not, yeah, by no means. Is it a neat, you know, circle that's just going over itself? It's like, each year or whatever, each rotation, it's it's going somewhere else.
And what I see is that it's slowly building quite a butterfly shaped orbit.
But that's that's only because it's no. Yeah, I think that's the. I don't think that's exactly right. Because it's like, if you're to see it in that, if you were to see it from a different angle, it doesn't look like a butterfly at all.
OK, and we'll put the visual.
Yeah, we'll put the visual on the website.
Yeah, here, Sarah, do you want to take a turn at this?
Yeah, I was going to say, send it to me.
OK, here, yeah.
I mean, the overall shape of it, that it's like forming it, almost looks like a bow or something. I saw a bow as well, yeah, a bow or a butterfly, like a classic little girls, or like a bow on a present or a bow in a girl.
That's true, Arianne. Do you want to look at it, too?
I mean, I'm super curious.
OK, here.
There's part of me that's like hearing you guys describe it as a bow and then be like, Oh, but it doesn't look like a bow from different angles. And then I want to be like, well, a bow doesn't look like a bow.
Oh, that's a good point, that's a good point, that's fact.
Yeah, uh, I mean, mostly I see like.
A spirograph on drugs, that's what it is. Spirograph on drugs, I think, is the best is the best description so far.
It's like, it's like if someone tried to use a spirograph to make a drawing of, like an orchid.
Right?
You know, it's like, already a weird shape. It's a little bit like, if you were to, like, take a slinky and you sort of like, start wrapping it.
In weird ways, slinky is right, slinky is right. It's like it's like a. It's like a slinky that got was too loved and too used, and it got all tangled up.
It's like a tangled up slinky.
An overload.
Well, let me that's kind of the that's kind of the motion that it has, OK, but the thing itself, yeah.
What is it, yeah.
So it's a rock, OK, it's kind of several football fields long.
OK, you could walk it.
You could walk it, but except that it's like, supposedly it would probably be pretty jagged, like it's not like smooth. It's a rough again. We can't escape these on our show.
Potato shaped OK, yeah.
So it doesn't have any ring.
It's probably gray, it doesn't have any ring.
Any volcanoes?
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