Astronomers have found a new world orbiting the Sun. The giant lump of rock and ice is larger than the planet Pluto and is now the farthest known object in the solar system.
The discovery was announced by US scientists yesterday and the object has unofficially been named Xena, after the TV series starring Lucy Lawless. “We have always wanted to name something Xena,” said Michael Brown, a member of the team that made the discovery using telescopes at the Palomar Observatory, outside San Diego, California.
For shame, Mr. Brown. Perpetuating the stereotype of the geeked-out, fantasy-loving astronomer is bad enough, but appropriating lesbian icons for cheap scientific thrills is quite another.
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