Never Let The Internet Pick The Name For Something In Space

When you allow the internet to vote on what to name something in space, lets say a moon of Pluto, expect something to stupid to happen. Well that’s exactly what the SETI institute decided to do. They are goinf to name a newly the discovered moon of Pluto…based on the results of an online poll. The BBC reports on the entirely predictable front runner:

Vulcan has taken more than 100,000 of some 325,000 votes cast in the online poll.

A new 20-30km wide moon of Pluto currently known as P4, was discovered in 2011; another of similar size – P5 – was spotted last year.

Star Trek actor William Shatner, who portrayed the Enterprise’s captain James Kirk, had previously called on the vote organisers to add Vulcan and Romulus to the list of names in contention.

The organisers accepted Vulcan, but rejected Romulus. Both Romulus and Remus (the names of twin brothers in the Roman foundation myth) are already in use as names for the moons of the asteroid 87 Silvia.

However, Mr Shatner appeared pleased that Vulcan made the list, tweeting: “I think we are over 100k votes for Vulcan on PlutoRocks.com that’s wonderful!”

Personally, I’d have gone with Tatooine, but that’s just me…