Word: planet
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Asked if he is the first person from his planet to travel in space, he replies...
Goodyear Television Playhouse presented the satire: young (29) Novelist Gore Vidal's Visit to a Small Planet. The small planet is the earth. The visit is made on an impulse by a cultivated space traveler named Kreton. He taxies his flying saucer from a distant galaxy somewhere in outer space right onto the rose-bed of an American family...
...clear that Kreton's people would not have the earth if it were handed to them on a platinum flying saucer. Some earthmen noted early in the visit that Kreton was a mere eccentric. Otherwise, what was he doing returning "to the Dark Ages of this insignificant planet?" But his visit proved an illuminating spoof, and British Actor Cyril Ritchard proved a fine spoofer...
Using the 82-in. telescope of McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, Texas, Dr. Kuiper took 260 pictures with a filter that excluded all but violet light. Most of them showed six vague light-and-dark bands around the cloudy planet. Dr. Kuiper believes that the bands are connected with the climate zones of Venus, and that therefore they must be parallel to the Venusian equator. The earth has climate zones too, e.g., the cloudy band (the rainy doldrums) around the equator and the clear-aired bands (the dry "horse latitudes") on either side...
...this point, Konopinski settled for the theorists a question that still bothers laymen who worry about chain reactions destroying the planet. "He proved that a thermonuclear reaction, even if initiated on the earth, could not spread under any circumstances. It was necessary to prove, and he did prove, that the 'super' bomb could not ignite the atmosphere or the ocean...