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I can fit 9 planets in my mind. No more. |
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Written by asap
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Thursday, 24 August 2006 |
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AP Photo/HO/NASA
A NASA illustration of the dirty dozen.
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NEW YORK — This whole 12 planet thing is not going to work for me.
For years, I’ve relied on a simple sentence for remembering the planets and their order in our solar system: “My very exciting mother just served us nine pizzas.”
It’s a mnemonic device taught in classrooms everywhere. (If you don’t get it, just look at the first letter of every word. It’s the same as the first letter of each planet.)
But if a new proposal from a group of astronomers is approved, there’ll be 12 planets instead of nine, and the mnemonic universe of generations of people will be radically altered.
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AP Photo/HO/NASA
A NASA rendering of Planet Xena.
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Under the expansion, we would see the addition of Ceres, presently an asteroid, between Mars and Jupiter; Charon, a moon of Pluto; and the provisionally named 2003 UB313, nicknamed Xena. The latter two would be at the end of the list.
There’s more than one mnemonic device for remembering the current nine planets. Many are variations on the mom-pizza sentence, but some are completely different, such as “Mark’s violet eyes make Jane sit up nights pining,” or “Most volcanoes erupt mulberry jam sandwiches under normal pressure.”
In any case, I always took comfort in knowing I could remember the planets in some way, even as I’ve forgotten so many other things from my school years. The quadratic formula long ago slipped from my memory. So did the entire subject of trigonometry (what was that for, anyway?). And I can barely remember chemistry, even though I was the top student.
But the planets stayed with me, and I thought surely that wouldn’t change in my lifetime. Life is complicated enough.
Apparently I was wrong.
The weirdest thing is that the International Astronomical Union, which has a planetary definition committee, may not be through. It has about a dozen other planet candidates under watch, so the list may change again in just a few years.
For now, though, it appears we may end up with something like MVEMCJSUNPCX.
Somehow “My very elegant mother can just sit under nine puffy clouds x-ray” doesn’t have quite the same ring. How about, “Mario, very earnestly: my cat just sat up now play catch xylophone?”
I guess the solar system is what we say it is. I just hope I can remember what to say.
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Got ideas for a new mnemonic device for the proposed 12 planets? Send them to soundoffap.org
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asap contributor Nahal Toosi is an Associated Press writer in New York. She’s out of this world! | Only registered users can write comments.
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