a month later the lowell observatory proudly announced that a young assistant had fulfilled percival lowell's dream. clyde tombaugh had finally found planet x. the day after the announcement the news hit the front page of the new york times. soon the discovery was heralded worldwide. but the new planet needed a name. across the atlantic, an 11-year-old english schoolgirl would come up with one. on march 14, 1930, venetia burney's grandfather, a librarian at oxford, was reading the morning newspaper and came across the story. an american has just discovered a new planet. i wonder what they'll call it. tyson: venetia had just finished studying the roman gods and jumped at the opportunity to name it after the god of the underworld. they could call it pluto. pluto. perhaps... yes. tyson: her grandfather thought that was a splendid idea, so he wrote a note to the lowell observatory. the director at lowell liked it, especially because pluto's official symbol would be the overlapping letters p and l, the initials of the observatory's long-gone founder, the man who started the search for pla