ONCE-upon-a-time, on a frozen, isolated shore, there lived an old Inuit eskimo with his beautiful daughter. She was a haughty young thing who spent her days combing out her long, dark hair and spurning the advances of the hunters who travelled in search of her hand.

Age wearied her father so he could no longer hunt to feed them. At last he ordered that she accept the proposal of the next man who came along. What a curious fellow he was, wrapped up against the chill wind in a dark cloak that covered his face. But he promised her the earth: a beautiful home of the best reindeer skins, a comfortable pillow of the softest feathers, and all the food she could want. She took the stranger's hand, and they flew o'er land and sea to her new home.

On arrival, the stranger threw off his cloak and cackled: he was a big, black raven with a cruel beak (some sources say he was a screeching fulmar seabird). Her home was all rough walrus hides and stinky fishskins. Her diet was the raw fish he brought every day. How unhappy was she! She sat on her desolate, lofty ledge, crying inconsolably at her lot and ruing the missed opportunities of her youth.

Her wails carried on the wind to the ears of her old father. Heroically, he stirred himself, and took out his rowboat. He paddled for months against the squalls and the sleet, the tide and the waves, the cold and the frost, her cries growing louder with each pull on the oars. Eventually he rescued her, and turned for home. But when the raven saw she was missing, he flew into a mighty rage and scoured the sea from on high looking for her.

He swooped down on their tiny craft, trying to lift his wife off. Unsuccessful amid the old man's flailing oars, the raven summoned up a fiercesome storm with his wings. The wind tossed the rowboat against towering walls of steely water, and it threatened to disintegrate into a thousand pieces with every crash.

Seeing how he had infuriated the elements, the old man determined to sacrifice his daughter, and he threw her into the icy water. Valiantly, she clung to the rowlocks, but the old man smashed at her fingers with his oars. First her fingernails tore off and fell into the water. Then complete fingers fell away and finally, with the cold gnawing at her bones and her father bashing her with the oars, the stumps of her hands broke off into the water, and she sank beneath the waves.

But she did not die. Her fingernails became fishes, her fingers became seals, her thumbs walruses and her hands whales. And she became the Inuit's immortal goddess of the sea. Through her generosity, she provides the eskimos with things to eat, for which they are truly thankful. But she has been sorely wronged by man, so when she is angered she summons up terrible storms to wreak her revenge.

She lives where she fell, at the bottom of the coldest seas on the planet. A place colder than anywhere in the universe - until this week, when scientists announced the discovery of the tenth planet in our solar system. Way out past Pluto, somewhere in the Inner Oort Cloud, it is eight billion miles from the sun (which appears no bigger than a pinhead held at arm's length). Its surface temperature is roughly minus 240 degrees C (-400F).

And so the scientists named the coldest planet in the universe after the Inuit Goddess who lives in the coldest place on Earth. They named it Sedna.