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Trekkies Vote 'Vulcan' Into the Solar System
New submitter jollyrgr3 writes "If William Shatner gets his wish, one of Pluto's two new moons will be named Vulcan. The two small moons were discovered recently, and the SETI Institute launched an online poll to let people choose names. Captain Kirk himself suggested the names Vulcan and Romulus. Vulcan was accepted as a candidate, and Shatner exhorted his Twitter followers to vote. Vulcan ended up winning by a landslide, taking 174,000 of the 450,000 total responses. The next highest was Cerberus at just shy of 100,000. The names still have to be approved by the International Astronomical Union, as they have the final say. Leonard Nimoy approves."
Don't you mean Kashyyyk and Endor?
While I'm a huge fan of Star Trek and Astronomy in general, I don't think a moon of Pluto should be called Vulcan. Why? The name "Vulcan" is from Roman mythology, and is the name of the Roman god of fire and volcanos. Last I checked, Pluto and it's moons were too far away from the Sun to have any connection to fire and volcanos. In other words, Pluto's moons are too far outside of the system to make the name "Vulcan" appropriate. I hope the IAU has the sense to name this moon after something that fits contextually.
Now if they'd discovered that Mercury had a moon, Vulcan would be the obvious choice!
Vulcan was the name of the hypothetical planet between Mercury and the Sun.
That made sense because Vulcan was the name of the Roman god of fire. It seems like an odd name for a moon frozen at 43K (-230C).
Make it so.
You should hand in your Geek card. It was that pussy Picard who used that phrase.
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Wookie and Ewok are not in Greek or Roman mythology and do not qualify under the rules, while Vulcan does.