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Hey there, Lulu here. First of all, I wanted to let you know about something very cool going on just beyond planet Earth, which is that it turns out that there is more than one moon orbiting around planet Earth. This is a somewhat recent discovery. There are a few littler moons dancing and orbiting and bobbing and weaving in different patterns. They are what's called quasimoons.

And we need your help

in naming one of them. This is real. The official governing bodies of space are handing the decision over to you to vote on what would be the best name for one of these moons. Earlier this year, we ran a contest and got thousands of submissions from around the world for what would make a great name for one of these moons. And it is now down to the finalists. And we want you to go check them out and then vote on your favorite.

which you can do by heading on over to Radiolab.org slash moon. Radiolab.org slash moon. The winner will be chosen soon. And again, this is totally real. That is what that quasi-moon will be named till the end of time. So this is your chance to leave your imprint on the heavens one more time. Radiolab.org slash moon. Go help name a moon. All right.

Today, we have an odyssey for you. We have a story that begins in a bedroom in California and then takes you all the way to outer space.

It is such a fun ride, and it is led by Radiolab co-host Latif Nasser, who is so excited to tell you about it that that alone provides fun. So that's all I'm going to say. Buckle up, bring your space ice cream, because we are leaving this planet to hear about something that for many, many years people only dreamed about.

Okay, so here we go. I'm handing it off to Latif Nasser in conversation with me. We're going to start with a mystery about the universe that I stumbled across in my kid's bedroom. Oh.

Okay, so about a year ago, I was putting my son to bed, my two-year-old son. You know that moment where it's like, okay, it's time, like, and boop, in the crib, right? Spike the football, run out of the room. Right, exactly. So as I was doing that, I, like, looked up to the adjacent wall at this poster that we have up, a kid's poster of the solar system. And I, like, noticed something, which is that Venus...

On this poster, Venus had a moon. And I was like, that's weird. I don't remember Venus having a moon. Huh. But like, what do I know? I don't know. You know? Right. So I put my kid to bed. Huh.

So then I went back to my bedroom and then I just look up on my phone, does Venus have a moon? And the first thing that comes up was a NASA website and it says Venus does not have a moon. Oh. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

But then the next morning, after my son wakes up, I look at the poster again. And on the poster, Venus very much has a moon. And not only does it have a moon, the moon has a name. Okay. Wait, I'm actually going to have you read it. Okay, one second. Okay, so I'm unrolling the poster here. Oh, it is in high detail. Right. Okay. And here, tell me what this moon is called.

Okay. I'm straining my eyes here. Zuzve? Zuzvi? Yeah, Zuzve. Okay. When you see the name, I'm like, that's too weirdly specific to be an accident. Right. That's not just like a poster designer being like, a little dot would look cute here. Right. It's labeled. Okay. Right. Okay, so then I started Googling Zuzve. It's a nice Google-able word. It's a very Google-able word. And there's nothing. Nothing.

Like, they were literally no results in English. What? The results were all in Czech. Huh. And they were about zoos. And I'm like, that's not the thing I'm looking for. Mm-hmm. So I was like, okay. Yeah. Where do I go from here? Uh, hi. Hey, Latif.

I'm good. So I called up my friend. Her name is Liz. Liz Landau. Just like a space nerd, but then also you as a professional space nerd. She has spent the last 10 years working with the media department at NASA. Oh. And before that, she used to be CNN's space correspondent. Okay. And so I told her. I showed her the poster. Sous-fait?

Zuzve. What? It's like supposed to be a moon for Venus. I've never heard of those. Okay. There are no moons of Venus, right? Right. Hmm.

So at this point, the next logical step... Your signature is very cryptic. Yeah, I've changed it to just writing my name now. ...was to track down the person who made the poster. Oh, oh, good. Okay. A guy named Alex Foster. I'm an illustrator and I'm from Margate, which is like the southeast coast of the UK. And I was basically like, did you put Zuzvay on here as a joke? Old map makers would make up fake towns. Or like a little hidden signature or something? Or is it your dog's name? Um...

No, no. Basically, I don't know. I don't know about this stuff. Like, I wanted to make a solar system map, so I looked online and did a bit of research. He says he found a detailed list of all the moons online, and there it was. Z-double-O-Z-V-E. But then when I tried to find that same list, I couldn't find it. I mean, I was, like, scouring the internet, and nothing. Huh. Weird. But then, around that same time...

I got this text from Liz. So in my head, because you had said Zuzbe, I was like, oh, it's Zuzbe. It's Zuzbe. But then I sort of like looked away from it and I looked at it again. And I was like, what if it's not Z-O-O-Z? What if it's 2002? And so I just Googled 2002 V-E and I found this object. Wow.

Which I did not know existed before. It's probably my writing as well. Like, I write in all caps. I thought it must have been said rather than two. And so when I told Alex about the mix-up, he realized he'd misread his own notes. And I thought the names, as soon as they made more sense. Oh!

Anyway, okay, okay. So long story short, there is a thing next to Venus and it is called 2002 VE. It was discovered in 2002. That's why it's called 2002 VE. 2002 VE 68, if you're being technical. Yes, but it's not a moon of Venus? So I thought that there was a simple answer to that, but it turns out there isn't. It's not a moon of Venus, but it's also not not a moon of Venus. Okay. Because...

2002 VE, which I'm just going to keep calling Zeus VE, is a mischievous weirdo character that defies long-held rules of our solar system and upends, at least for me, the way I think about the entire universe. I mean, I actually have no formal training in astronomy, believe it or not. I just have a

BS in physics, which I just barely got. So this is Brian. I am Brian Skiff. He does, in fact, work in astronomy. At Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. I am a research assistant. Brian and his colleagues kicked off this brand new asteroid scavenger hunt. Is that how you pronounce it? Yeah. The Lowell Observatory Near Earth Object Search. NASA likes acronyms when you put in grant proposals. Ha ha ha!

And what they did was... We refurbished a wide field camera of a special kind. Essentially, their job was to scan... A substantial fraction of the sky. Every single night. And what they were looking for were... Potentially hazardous asteroids. And it is in this nightly hunt that Brian discovers Zuzvei.

Okay. It looks like an asteroid about the size of the Eiffel Tower. Oh, okay. Imagine something kind of gray and pockmarked and potato-shaped. Oh. I had no notion that I had even discovered it. But fast forward a year and...

Can you see my face? I can see your face. Zuzve catches the attention of this other scientist. In Finland, my name is pronounced simply Seppo Mikkola. Back in 2003, Seppo was an astronomer at the University of Turku studying... Celestial mechanics. Basically, orbits.

Seppo says that when he first noticed Zuzve, he realized it was in a... As in, its orbit didn't really make sense.

So, SEPBO calls up his colleague, whose name is Paul, whom I also called. He's also an orbit-studying astronomer at the University of Western Ontario. Yes. And he says, in order to fully understand how weird Zuseve's orbit is... Let me think about the best way to explain this. You have to understand this one fact about the solar system. It's an ironclad rule of our solar system.

That every celestial body moves in an orbit. And even though it can get gravitationally nudged around by other things near it, it primarily orbits one thing. And so the moons orbit planets, the planets orbit the sun. The sun is pulling on everything in the solar system. That's true. But moons, including ours, are much closer to their planets. So it's looping the planets.

And that's what Paul says objects in our solar system generally do. Everything hula hoops one bigger thing. Yes. Got it. Now, Seppo and Paul look at Zuseve. Making careful calculations, computer simulations and so forth. And what they find is it's being pulled around by the sun's gravity.

So it orbits the sun, that's its primary partner. But weirdly, even though it's orbiting the sun, Venus is also keeping this tiny gravitational toehold on it. And because of that, while Zuzvay is going around the sun, it actually stays relatively close to Venus and loops around it. It circles Venus too. To our amazement, it's orbiting both, revealing, if you will, the first quasi-moon orbit.

Known in our solar system. Quasi meaning just like a small moon? Quasi meaning neither moon nor not moon. It's this mysterious in-between thing that's the first anyone has ever discovered anywhere in the universe. Quasi moon or crazy moon, which one is correct pronunciation? When you say it, I like crazy because it sounds like crazy. So like Latif?

This is neat, but it does seem like just one sort of weird little pebble out there ping-ponging around in the whole solar system. Like, why has it captured your attention? Why do you care about it so much? Okay, so much of it goes back to...

The poster, right? The map. In your kid's room. In my kid's room. But really, at least for me, in my head, the solar system diagram that we all see in school. And it's like you have the sun and then you have all the planets. And it's like a beautiful, perfect circle inside a circle inside a circle inside a circle inside a circle. And they all have like...

tracks, right? Right. And it's predictable. You can keep your watch by it. Yeah, exactly. It's a clock. We live in a clock, right? Right. But then Zuzve doesn't seem to fit neatly within that system. It's a weirdo. It's a rule breaker. But don't you think Zuzve's still operating within a bigger clock? Like it might still just be following different rules. Sure, there are rules. There are definitely rules. But the thing is, Zuzve is following rules that we can never fully grasp. Mathematically,

You just cannot calculate where Zuse is going to go next. Like, for example, we know that Zuse is going to leave Venus at some point, but we don't know what it's going to do after that. It's a mystery. Okay, that is exciting. And by the way, Zuse is not the only unpredictable free spirit out there in the solar system. It's just the beginning. Yeah.

Because since 2002, scientists have started finding lots more of these quasimoons. And these other quasimoons, some of them behave in even weirder ways than Zeusvay does. Huh. Okay. There are the Jovian Trojan asteroids. Even though they're orbiting Jupiter, they don't circle it. They actually stay ahead of or behind Jupiter as all of them go around the sun.

There's a group which always stay in front of it and another group which always stay behind it. Like Secret Service agents or something. Yeah, something like that. Then there are Horseshoe Quasimoons, which look like they... Start out in front of the planet. Orbit partway around the planet. And then they stop and slow down. Turn around, go back the other way. Wait, how do they stop and slow down and turn around? Ha ha ha ha!

It's the planet's gravity that causes this advance and retreat motion. Weird. It's going to get weirder here. There's some that do like a comma shape. Hmm. Like back and forth. Ha ha.

And those ones are called tadpoles. That's cute. And Earth has a bunch of quasi-moons too. We do? How many have they found? There's at least like seven of them, I think. What? And all of these are all different. Like we have some Trojan moons. We have some horseshoe moons. Wow. And so now when I think of that same map, it's like it's full of all these weirdo characters all dancing around like a Fantasia, you know? No, I feel that.

And for me, like, for Zuzve to enter my life in this totally random way because some illustrator accidentally put it there and it ended up in my kid's room and then Zuzve itself was this, you know...

rock star that let me in on this secret that this place we live in is stranger and more connected and more filled with chaos and possibility than I ever thought. Like, that's what I want. And that's what I want my kid to go to bed thinking about every night. Okay, that is pretty beautiful. Yeah, right? That gave me the shin tingles. Zuzbe, right? Zuzbe, right? Go, Zuzbe.

Okay, so Lulu, this was supposed to be the end of the story. Felt like an end. But it felt like three ends. But as I was reporting, this other possibility opened up. And I just could not, I could not resist. It is a way to put Zuzve on the map for real. What do you mean? I'll explain after the break. Okay. Okay.

How do you solve a problem like a Zuzwe? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? You can't because gravity and we're going to follow Zuzwe as she tears another hole in the universe into a new possibility. Okay, continue.

Brains On is an award-winning science podcast for curious kids and adults. Each week, a different kid co-host joins me to find answers to fascinating questions like, what was the first life on Earth? Do dogs know they're dogs? And why can't we remember when we were babies? Plus, we have mystery sounds for you to guess, songs for you to dance to, and lots of facts, all checked by experts. You can listen to Brains On wherever you listen to podcasts.

Okay. So this is Radiolab. I'm Latif Nasser. I'm Lula Miller. Back to Zuzve. Mm-hmm. So when I was talking to Paul Wiegert, remember, who's the guy who helped figure out this was a quasiment. Yeah. He said this, like, one line kind of...

not even what I was asking about. But like once he said it, I couldn't unhear it. All asteroids, when they're first seen, are given what's called a provisional designation. 2002 VE is just the name it got auto-assigned when it was discovered. Not its final name. And it hit me, like 2002 VE68 is a

Is a terrible name. It like sounds like a car serial number. It just doesn't feel right. Yeah, it's not the right name for this beautiful creature in the sky. I hear that. And that's when I got the idea that I, we have got to name it. Wait, can you do that? Well, so I asked Paul, like, who's in charge of naming asteroids? The privilege of suggesting a name goes to the discoverer.

It turns out that is me. So I went back to Brian Skiff, the guy who discovered Zuzvay. In the early days, one was encouraged to be, you know, imaginative. He's discovered over 50 asteroids and has named a bunch of them. In the early 80s, we had four asteroids numbered consecutively. We named them for the Beatles.

He told me about a bunch of other weirdly named asteroids. There's a Swiss astronomer that named it for his favorite airline, which is Swiss Air. So random. An astronomer named one for his cat, Mr. Spock. And hearing him say all these names, like, it just occurred to me, do you think it would be possible...

to actually name this thing Zuzve. Oh my God, yes, yes. Yes, I guess that is possible. I mean, it has to be. You have to immortalize the typo. It needs to be Zuzve. It should be Zuzve. It wants to be Zuzve. There's no better name. So now, theoretically, you just have to like send a request to the powers that be and then they will name it? Yes, yes. And you are...

Thinking favorably of naming it Zuzve? Oh, I wouldn't think of that at all. You would not name it Zuzve? No. I think the answer is no. The answer is no?

Okay, can I make a case to you? And Lulu, as you know, I am nothing if not persistent. That's like my number one superpower. This is true. So the illustrator mistook 2002 for Z-O-M-A-N. I tried to make the case. And in the process, I realized I actually had forgotten to tell Brian the whole story behind the name Zuzve, like with the poster and everything. And when I did... Oh, okay.

Wow. So it was a mistake. Wow. It was a mistake. So he made an error, but I kind of fell in love with the error. Wow. Yeah, that's kind of interesting. And there's nothing else in the whole world called Zuzbe. Zuzbe.

Would you like to name this asteroid Zeus Fae? It'd be interesting if the story of this mistake could be compressed down to 300 characters. Brian was like, okay, look, it's a great story and all, but in order to submit the form to request the name, everything you're telling me has to fit in 300 characters or less. Okay, we could do that? Yeah, sure.

That's enough of a little twist that that would be very interesting. Right? To see if it gets by the naming committee. Wait, wait, naming committee? Yeah. So basically when Brian submits the name, it would then have to be reviewed by this group called the IAU. The International Astronomical Union. Those are the name keepers, name deciders. Yeah. Well, the official term is the Working Group Small Body Nomenclature.

Which is a bit of a mouthful. Yeah. So we normally just call it the WGSBN. It's very cool what you do, but I do think maybe you need a better name. So this is Gareth Williams. He's an astronomer who worked at Harvard for many years and is the secretary of that working group.

So Gareth explained that the working group is responsible for naming asteroids and comets. And it's made up of 11 voting members who are astronomers who live all over the world. So I very quickly figured out that it's a lot more than just a rubber stamp and that Gareth and the entire working group take that vetting pretty seriously. Basically, it's a majority vote. OK, so hypothetically, how does one make their case to these 11 people?

Do you all gather together to discuss the proposals in some marbled hall somewhere? Marbled hall. No, we don't have formal meetings. They do everything online. Any member of the working group can log in to the website through a special interface and vote on the names whenever they feel like it. Got it. Basically, I just became even more convinced that it all goes back to that

you know, that 300-character statement. Because that's what all the members of the working group are looking at when they cast their vote. Okay, so what did you end up writing? Here is the sentence. Are you ready? Okay. So I actually did call Brian back to read it to him before he...

Submitted it? Here it is. And it's actually, so the requirement is 360 characters. Oh, okay. And this is actually only 287 characters. So we got even gravy. If there's something you want to add in there, like whatever. There's room. Okay, here's what I got. As the first quasimoon ever discovered in the universe, this object deserves a name as rare as its orbit.

That sounds fine.

Yeah? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we might, you know, change kids to children and, you know, very minor peaks. Okay. But other than that. Okay, great. Easy. Done. It sounds fine to me. Do you think they'll do it? What do you think is going to happen? I guess I don't have a good feeling for that. Okay. So after that, Brian officially submitted the name proposal to the working group. Okay. And our sense was this kind of thing usually takes a couple months. Right. That was about three and a half months ago. Okay.

But then we scheduled. Oh, my God. Are you about to tell? Okay, okay, okay. Keep going. So we scheduled a time for when he would have the verdict. Mm-hmm. Yep.

I hear you. Oh, great. I can hear you. So we got on the phone for the moment of truth. Okay. Let me just check my phone. Great. I'm logged in on my phone to the voting site. Okay. Let me just check. Let me just refresh the page. Oh, my gosh. This is so dramatic. I'm like, I'm holding my breath here. Well, I'm very pleased to announce that the working group Small Body Nomenclature has approved the name Zuzvay. Oh, my gosh.

Oh my God. Are you serious? Wow. Are you serious? Yeah. They're naming it Zuzve. Oh, wow. Great. I also just broke the news to Brian Skiff, the discoverer of Zuzve who helped us propose the name. Well, that's great on everyone's part. And... Oh, good. That's so cool. Yeah. I also called Alex Foster. A poster guy? A poster guy to be like...

Like your mistake is now etched in the heavens forever. Now, having gone through what we went through, that retroactively makes the poster correct. That's amazing. Wow. How do you feel? I mean, I feel awesome. Like it's like, I don't know. It's the first thing like it that we ever found. And now it has a weird one of a kind name. So that that feels right. How do you feel?

I feel happy. I think it's a good name. Can you tell me what you voted? Well, since it's now been approved, I can say that I voted for it.

I just want to give you a big hug right now. A virtual hug it'll have to be since we're quite a few miles apart. Yes, yes. Has anything ever been named after a typo before? After a typo? Oh, that's an interesting one. I'm having a hard time thinking of a prior example of a typo. Gee whiz. I can't think of anything right offhand either.

Wow. That is wild. This funny little thing you like squinted at, this typo that a poster designer put on a piece of paper that reached your eye that then led you on this whole chase, like that that is now immortalized and will outlast all of us in the sky. Yep. All right. All right.

That'll do it for today. Biggest thanks to Latif Nasser. Biggest thanks to Zuzve. And biggest thanks to you for listening. We'll be dropping back down to this lumpy old planet of ours to discover what wild secrets we can find there. Bye.

This episode is reported by me, Latif Nasr, with help from Akedi Foster Keys. It was produced by Sara Khari. Original music and sound design contributed by Sara Khari and Jeremy Bloom, with mixing help from Arianne Wack. Fact-checking by Diane Kelly and edited by Becca Bressler.

Special thanks to Larry Wasserman and everyone else at the Lowell Observatory, as well as to Rich Kramer. Thank you to the IAU and their small but mighty Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature, as well as to the Bamboo Forest class of kindergartners and first graders who also have small bodies. Liz Landau, who you will remember, cracked the 2002 VE Mystery. You can hear her work on NASA's Curious Universe podcast.

Also wanted to give a special mention to illustrator Alex Foster.

Hi, I'm Emma, and I live in Portland, Maine. Here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Jnanasambandam, Matt Kielty,

Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

Hi, this is Susanna calling from Washington, D.C. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.