Segment aired Aug. 15, 2015 as part of the “Dave’s Gone By” radio program hosted by Dave Lefkowitz.
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49.
A French astronomer thrills his colleagues when he calls them over to his telescope and shows them his discovery: a new planet.
“That’s amazing!” they say. “Can you tell what it’s made out of?”
“From what I can see, it’s a bunch of molecular clusters that formed into a giant polymer.”
“We must alert the whole scientific community,” says another colleague. “Hey, have you named it yet?”
“No,” says the astronomer. “I’m stuck on that part.”
“Well, what about naming it after yourself?”
“I thought about that, but my first name is Jean, which would sound silly: Planet Jean. And my last name is Eugenia, which, as you know, already is a planet.”
Another scientist chimes in, “Well, what about naming it based on how it looks?”
“Not a bad idea,” says Jean, looking through his telescope. “Well, its surface is smooth, and the color is yellowish white. It’s slightly more ovoid than round. Maybe we should call it, Planet Egg.”
“Okay,” says the head of the lab. “We should sent out a press release to all the journals, Scientific American, Astronomy Now, Sky and Telescope, and Italian Cuisine Magazine.
“Wait,” says the astronomer. “I get the journals and the science books. But why Italian Cuisine?”
“Because,” says the colleague. “You found an Egg Planet Polymer, Jean.”