NASA Asks Twitter Users To Name Those Newly Discovered Planets. The Inevitable Happens.

Nasa lightheartedly asked Twitter users to help name seven newly discovered planets ― and Planet McPlanetface immediately became one of the favorite suggestions.

Remember Boaty McBoatface? (The moniker that people voted for after the British government asked the the public to name its new polar exploration ship.) Well, this is his cosmic cousin. Probably.

Other tweeters took their naming inspiration from the seven Harry Potter novels, the seven “Fast and the Furious” movies, “Game of Thrones” and Apple’s iPhone models. There was also some trolling of President Donald Trump.

While many of the amusing ideas have gone viral, it’s unlikely that any of them will actually end up being used to identify one of the TRAPPIST-1 solar system’s Earth-sized planets, which are located 39 light years away.

That is unless the International Astronomical Union, which names astronomical objects, decides that one of them is the way to go. We can but dream...