Let's face it: The Earth got a raw deal, moon-wise. Other planets have multiple moons with mythologically-inspired names, and here we are with just one lonely, unimaginatively named Moon. You can see the sadness on the face embedded in its surface.

The moon might not have always been so alone, however, Cosmos reports. Astronomers recently published a paper in Cornell University's journal Icarus speculating that two asteroidal bodies, dubbed Trojans, may have formed 4.4 billion years ago, around the time the Moon we know came into being. The study uses mathematical modeling to show how the Trojans could remain stable in a gravitational equilibrium between Earth and the Moon, allowing them to orbit the Earth for a few million years. They were both tiny—probably about 100 kilometers in diameter—and would have appeared to Earthlings as two bright stars.

When these Trojans eventually left their orbits, the evidence suggests that they may have been among the debris that eventually slammed into the moon, creating the familiar pockmarks we see today. They also could have been burned up by the sun, or broken into smaller asteroids.

“I don’t understand,” said a young boy named Anton. “How can they just not make it a planet anymore?”

Having just finished a school project on Pluto, Anton was understandably shaken up when his favorite celestial body was demoted to “dwarf” status last year. After a few strokes stroke of a pen, his favorite planet was no longer a planet.

Anton’s dad, Robert Klose, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, expresses his son’s disappointment and frustration at the loss of the beloved Pluto. Klose writes that his son felt “like a man without a country, or, in this case, a planet.”

Klose tried to console his son saying, “In eight years we’ll get our first real look at Pluto. Then who knows? Maybe they'll decide it's a planet again.”

“Do you really think so?” Anton asked with hopeful expectation. We'll have to wait and see. —Cara Binder