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"Xena" To Be Named Eris

rdwald writes, "After over a year of hanging in maybe-planet limbo, newly-classified 2003 UB313, nicknamed Xena, now has a permanent name: Eris, goddess of strife. Its moon will be named Dysnomia, after the goddess of lawlessness — in Greek mythology, Eris's daughter — certainly not a reference there... I don't think I'm alone when I say, 'Hail Eris! All hail Discordia!'" In the same IAU announcement (PDF), Pluto was given its official minor planet number: 134340.

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  1. Re:First planet named after an IRC network! by Random832 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    the EF in EFnet stands for "Eris free" - in the sense of "without Eris". There was a misconfigured server called eris.berkeley.edu and a bunch of server admins got together to make a new network so they could ban it.

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