'Vulcan' Leads Pluto Moon Vote

'Vulcan' has big lead in bid to name Pluto's newly discovered moons.

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3 months ago

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William Shatner

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Star Trek fans are boldly leading a charge to name one of Pluto's newly discovered moons 'Vulcan'. In the TV series and films, Vulcan is the name of Spock's home planet. So far it's the main contender out of 21 names, taking more than 100,000 of some 330,000 votes cast for the online poll. SOUNDBITE: 12-year-old Emily Harvill saying: "I think that would be pretty cool because it's in space and Star Trek is a good movie, so yeah." SOUNDBITE: Sixteen year-old Dale Ducharme, saying: "That would be pretty cool. I think it would be great also because kids in school they have all these names that don't really mean a lot to them whereas this way it may be a lot easier for them to memorise it and learn it and stuff, you know. It's a lot easier to learn because, you know, 'hey, that's on Star Trek.' or 'hey, that sounds pretty cool, like a weird name.' so it would kind of stick out to them." Star Trek actor William Shatner, who portrayed the Enterprise's captain James T. Kirk, proposed it. He's been rallying support on Twitter. The poll is being run by the Seti Institute in California, whose astronomers discovered the two 20-30km wide moons. Until now, they've been known as P4 and P5. Voting to make it so ends on February 25th. The selected names will then be submitted to the International Astronomical Union (IAU) for consideration.