Quiz # 34 for 20 May
We hope you are enjoying our quizzes. We think you'll find them tougher than others but also more rewarding. The Quizmaster is away, so we have asked some RNZers to set a quiz. This week it is the turn of newsreader Nicola Wright.
Click on each question to reveal the answer, or click on the 'Show all the answers' link to see how you went and to learn more. Let us know any suggestions you have for improving the quiz by emailing quizmaster@radionz.co.nz.
Q 1 Space fascinates, beguiles and frightens humanity, and artists know what to do about that. Orson Welles did a well-recorded number on the American populace with his radio broadcast of HG Wells' War of the Worlds in 1938. But whose smooth tones voiced to perfection the part of the narrator in Jeff Wayne's 1978 rocked-out double LP adaptation?
A Richard Burton. Neither being Welsh nor married to Elizabeth Taylor could prevent his delivering a pitch-perfect rendition of Wells' subtly understated English journalist in the days of an Earth invasion from Mars.
Q 2 Which band performed the The Journey of the Sorcerer, the hauntingly evocative theme used in all recorded iterations of Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy?
A The Eagles. Douglas Adams found the 'something electronic with a bit of banjo in it, for an on the road feel' among the album tracks on the big-selling LP, One of These Nights.
Q 3 According to Eric Idle's Galaxy Song, from Monty Python's Meaning of Life, how far away is Earth from galactic central point? Go on, I'll get you started: "Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving..."
A 30,000 light years. Some may say a more scientific estimate is 7.6 to 8.7 parsecs, but that just doesn't scan.
Q 4 It is a well-known and popular fact that Yuri Gargarin was the first human being in outer space, orbiting Earth in April 1961. But which sci-fi author gave us the original Space Cadet?
A Robert A. Heinlen wrote Space Cadet. The TV show based on his 1948 novel about a teen who joins Space Patrol (which keeps peace on Earth by storing all its nuclear weapons in orbit and threatening to drop them on anyone who starts something) made "space cadet" a household phrase.
Since then, of course, the meaning has shifted somewhat...
Q 5 TV's Father Dougal McGuire, offsider to the eponymous Father Ted, was played by Ardal O'Hanlon, who also has among his acting credits a character named Thomas Kincade Brannigan. What show did that character appear in?
A Dr Who, an episode called Gridlock with the Tenth Doctor, David Tennant. Brannigan was a member of the Catkind race and his children were played by real kittens. Awwww...
Q 6 Bears also play their part in space science. Why is the "Goldilocks Zone" so named?
A It has just the right conditions - like Baby Bear's porridge, neither too hot nor too cold - to find liquid water. And finding water is a key ingredient in the search for life. (Finding porridge would constitute proof)
Q 7 And speaking of Slade Nick, what did Porridge's Bunny Warren tell Fletch was the answer to the question: if the Sun was on the table and the Earth at the other end of the cell, on that scale, where would the nearest star be?
A Jo'burg being about 8000 kilometres, or 5000 miles from Cumberland. That nearest star is Proxima Centauri, 4.22 light years away. I'd convert that to parsecs for you, but I think I hear the phone ringing...
Q 8 Or rather, the "rap-rod", as coined by Zaphod Beeblebrox, a Beetlegeusean with a way with words. Complete his quote: "I am so amazingly cool you could...
A "...keep a side of meat in me for a month". He went on to add that he was so hip, he had difficulty seeing over his pelvis.
Q 9 In early May, scientists announced the discovery of potentially life-bearing planets orbiting a star officially classed as an ultra-cool dwarf. Only one crew member from TV's Red Dwarf could ever stake a claim to coolness, but when an emotion-sucking polymorph drains Cat of all that, who does he become?
A Dwayne Dibbley a.k.a the Duke of Dork.
Q 10 All things (like this quiz, thank heavens) come to an end, some more spectacularly than others. Which term is associated with the final, gigantic explosive end of a supergiant star?
A A supernova, which lasts only a week or so but shines as brightly as a galaxy of 100 billion stars. When iron fuses in its core a star collapses instantly - then rebounds in a mighty explosion.