Living up to her Name

The formal naming of UB313 as "Eris" has been nothing but trouble for Pluto. Last year when the Hubble Space Telescope established that Eris had a larger diameter than Pluto, the International Astronomical Union introduced the category of "dwarf planet" and demoted Pluto into this new category, which it shared with Eris and Ceres (previously recognized as the largest asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter. To add insult to injury, yesterday the BBC reported that the mass or Eris also exceeds that of Pluto. Indeed, it has enough mass to sustain an orbiting moon, which has been named Dysnomia and was used to calculate this mass. Never has there been such an apposite assignment of names! Crossword puzzle solvers are probably familiar with Eris. She is the daughter of Ares (Mars); and her name means "discord." Dysnomia is her daughter; and her name means "lawlessness." Pluto, of course, is the Roman name for Hades, who rules over the dead in the underworld (and happens to be Ceres' son-in-law). Never a particularly cheerful sort, his gloom has now been elevated by the grandchild of his brother Jupiter (Zeus)! The BBC appears to have appreciated this amusing collision of art and life, but only in a sidebar of details about Eris (the dwarf planet), which carries the headline "World of Discord!"