So, why does one strive to be a professional musician? Fame? Money? Recognition of talent? Easy access to women and drugs? Immortality?Well, sure - all of the above.
But now we can add one more great reason to be a famous musician - to have a planet named after you.
How does this happen? The helpful guidelines on this Harvard site include:
The discoverer of a particular object [planet] has the privilege of suggesting a name to a committee that judges its suitability. Contrary to some recent media reports it is not possible to buy a minor planet [damn it]. If you have a name you would like to apply, the best advice is "Go out and discover one!".
So who has had the honor? As you'd expect, PROG ROCKERS. Pink Floyd, Yes, all three members of Rush, Vangelis (great planet name, no?), Enya and Frank Zappa have 'em.
But so do Jimmy Page, Springsteen, Phil Spector (must be a killer planet - ha ha), all of the Beatles (welcome to Planet Ringo), Brian Wilson and the weirdest one, the Bee Gees. Huh?
OK, I know what I am gonna do this weekend. Find a planet and name it "Porcupine Tree."
5 comments:
Dig it, man. Cool post. If I remember correctly, the guys from Rush are (if you are looking) under their real names "Gary Lee Weinrib" and "Alexander Zivojinovich". Am I a pathetic Rush geek or what (is there any other kind)?
As an amusing bit of trivia, the number of stars in our galaxy is about 100 billion. This happens to be about the same number of human people who have EVER lived (on Earth) since 1 million BC. If there was an average of 2 planets per star, there would be plenty of room for every person who ever lived to have a planet named after them plus loads of leftovers for freakish names like Porcupine Tree :) And that's just our galaxy. Just to give you an idea, there are an estimated 125 billion galaxies in the universe. What this means is that there are about as many planets in the universe as there are carbon atoms in the tip of pencil. Contemplate.
In the name of planet Earth I declare thee Isorski!
Just for the record, Geddylee and Lifeson are both "planets" (6 to 14km diameter asteroids) between Mars and Jupiter. I knew you were loosing sleep over this.
Voxmoose, are you sure you aren't the geeky math professor on "Numbers"??? :-)
This post wasn't really that interesting for you, Voxmoose, was it?
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