"First Rock From the Sun"

My Own "Emily Litella" Moment

"First Rock From the Sun" --that's what the tiny headline, at the bottom of The New York Times science section, read the other day.

"Holy $#%@!," I thought.

I didn't know we had a space probe studying the Sun.

And if we did, and it brought something back, why is it such a tiny headline?

And how is that even possible, given that the sun is made up of superheated gases, not rocks?? (or so my 8th grade science teacher always said).

The explanation, it turns out, is that the headline is a play on the old TV show "Third Rock from the Sun."

The "first rock from the Sun" would be Mercury, and the story was referring to new photos of its surface taken by a NASA probe.

As Emily Litella always used to say, "Never mind . . . ."