i'm thankful to have learned the (possibly apocryphal, but i don't care) story that after apollo 11 brought rocks back from the moon, there was a meeting where the vacuum-sealed box was opened for a team of eminent geologists from ivy league universities and when the cover was taken off and the rocks were revealed and the geologists peered inside, witnessing the first specimens brought back from a world other than our own, the first thing any of them said was, "holy shit, it looks like a bunch of burnt potatoes!"