
So, to both fix the naming problem and celebrate the number of WASP planets, I have decided to turn all Wasp planets into the 150 original Pokemon! Working on Wasp-12 b? Nope – You’re working on Butterfree. Wasp-6? Charizard. Wasp-64? Machoke. Wasp-135 b? Jolteon. IAU eat you heart out…
And while I know this will be a difficult thing to achieve politically, we can at least achieve it indirectly, thanks to the magic of Chrome Apps! Unfortunately I don’t have time to make a completely self-contained app for this, but here’s 4 quick steps to follow to add a bit of early-naughties humour to exoplanet science:
- Open Chrome and go here to download ‘WordReplacer’
- Find Chrome’s ‘Settings’ menu, then the ‘Extensions’ tab, then find ‘Word Replacer’ and click on options.
- Open up this pastebin in another tab, and copy the text (it’s easiest from the “Raw paste data” box at the bottom). [BONUS: Kepler names replaced by 1920s baby names with this pastebin]
- Back on Word Replacer, click ‘Import’ and paste the text in. Finally, click Save Settings and you’re good to go!
Then you get to enjoy lists such as this; or papers such as this:
. . . . EDIT: Bonus update. Now replace all Kepler planet names with the top 2000 baby names… from the 1920s! Say hello to planets Gertrude (Kepler-127), Salvatore (312) and Ruth (Kepler-11). Use this pastebin in place of the WASP-only one above to get both!