For journal club at Gemini today, we had a presentation of a recent paper about the discovery of a second ring around Quaoar [KWA-oh-ar], a minor planet in the outer Solar System which was already known to host one. In an email reminder this morning the host jokingly mentioned something to the effect of the two rings possibly being an adventure for Tolkien fans, which sparked the phrase “two rings for faint Quaoar, up in the sky” in my head. I wrote out the first few lines of Tolkien's famous poem with some rewording and sent it back for some office humor, and having thought over it some more today, here's what I ultimately came up with:
Two rings for faint Quaoar, up in the sky,
Seven for old Saturn, formed of ice and stone,
Nine for Uranus, dark to the eye,
One for Haumea, circling far alone
In the Solar System, where ring systems fly.
One Thing to rule them all, One Thing to guide them,
One Thing to bring them all, and into ringlets wind them
In the Solar System, where ring systems fly.
A bit of doggerel, but I had fun coming up with it. I haven't matched syllable numbers perfectly, but the scansion and timings should all still work.
(The One Thing is gravity, in this case. A hui hou!)
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