Heavenly Bodies

Long Awkward Pause readers are hip, informed and intelligent people. Because this is true, you like to Science, and I’ve been assigned an article to expand your universe. At least to bring space to your place. So I’m about to get all Neil deGrasse Tyson here. Maybe you thought by reading the title that this post would feature boobs. I just said, ‘boobs,’ so there you go.

Knows how to science

Onward… you, bright reader, have noted the huge coverage of space and space-related things in the news lately. In fact, we’re apparently managing to discover more planets than the Republican Party is creating candidates. Or more planets than emails that Hillary Clinton has or has not sent. Whatever. Either way, this is more interesting than politics.

I’d rather do Neil

Pluto is huge news. Well, relatively speaking. At least we’ve nailed down that it’s the largest object out past Neptune as far as we know. Pluto edged out Eris, another plutoid (see what being king of the dwarf planets gets you?), for having the most size. This made Pluto feel a bit better after being demoted from planet status. Word has it, though, that when NASA informed Pluto that it was no longer a planet because it wasn’t big enough, Pluto came back with, “Your mom thought I was big enough.”

Complete with Hello Kitty heart

In fact, there is more and more shit scattered out there with Pluto than we ever imagined. The powers that be have set to naming them all, and frankly I think we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. Makemake? Haumea? And then Quaoar. I need a class on how to pronounce, Quaoar. Three words: Two. Freaking. Consonants. No offense to Polynesians, y’all. And in my opinion, Orcus sounds like a lame metal band from Florida. I’m thinking that ‘2007 OR’ we should just name ‘Steve.’ When we find more, we could go with ‘Barry’ and then ‘Phil.’

Where did this shit come from?

Here in the solar system, we’ve found out that even Mercury has water, Mars and Titan (Saturn’s moon) might have organic stuff on them, and Jupiter has kick-ass moons. One comes with volcanoes, another with an underground ocean, sort of. While Jupiter and Saturn have a brag-off about their moons, Uranus is enjoying a well-deserved break from being the literal butt of all solar system jokes. I won’t bother driving that joke home – you all don’t need poked to get it.