Dragon Ball fans are petitioning to officially rename planet after Piccolo’s home world

NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has been roaming out space for a while now. Four years ago, the telescope discovered a planet orbiting the star named Kepler-22. In science, the person that discovers something gets to name it and because of that, the planet was aptly named Kepler-22b.

Johannes Kepler, an astronomer from the Renaissance, has quite a few planets and stars named after him (including the telescope). Looking to slow the rate in which Kepler takes over the cosmos, Lou Earley has proposed renaming Kepler-22b to Planet Namek.

If you're a fan of Dragon Ball or read the headline of this article, you are aware that Namek is the home planet of Piccolo (and all his fellow Namekians).

Earley is not a scientist, he is a fan of the Dragon Ball series – but that doesn't matter. His cause has gained so much momentum that over 67,000 people have signed his petition on Change.Org (via RocketNews). Once the petition reaches its goal of 75,000 signatures, Earley will submit his idea to the International Astronomical Union. Whether or not the planet is renamed is up to the International Astronomical Union, but Earley does make a good point… Kepler-22b and Namek look pretty similar.

Left: NASA's artistic rendering of Kepler-22b, Right: Namek