Aliens 101

Recently I have been thinking about aliens, and how we create our aliens to be relatively like us in most regards. Take some of the Star Trek aliens, for example: 

This guy, and that guy.

Very humanoid. Along with those are all of the people from BattleStar Galactica and Firefly, aliens from Star Trek and Star Wars, Doctor Who, etc. We seem to like the idea of humans exploring the universe and finding other humanoids. But those are definitely not the only types of aliens the human mind has invented.

There are much weirder aliens...

 Like this giant lump of meat, which is actually an alien (Torchwood) and it's still alive when they cut it up.

And then you have scary.

This is a Predator, which may not be an alien after all, just a human from the future (Primeval). But alien enough by one dictionary definition (unlike one's own; strange; not belonging to one.)

And there are Daleks - they set the bar for scariness, with their insatiable desire to be the only intelligent life in the entire universe and their tendency to exterminate everyone (Doctor Who).

 The Slitheen, who kill humans and take their skin to wear as suits (Doctor Who)...

 The Silence, who make you forget they ever existed when you can't see them (Doctor Who)...

The blue aliens are scary because they seem to be studying us... and yet we can't understand them (Stargate Universe).

There are of course hilarious aliens...

(Men in Black)

And Superheroes...

(Megamind)

(Superman)

And let's not forget the metal aliens...

This is an attacker drone from Stargate Universe, set on autopilot to find and destroy any and all forms of technology that are at or above its level. They escaped, don't worry.

These two are Cylons from Battlestar Galactica. Everyone in Battlestar is technically an alien, but these are not human aliens. Of course, humans invented them...

And the all-famous Cybermen (Doctor Who), not technically aliens, but creatures invented by humans (and made out of humans) usually brought in from another universe or from the future.

And we wouldn't want to leave out a Transformer.

I'm also going to throw a nice alien in, for good measure:

These aliens can morph into anything you want them to be. They are in Star Trek, Next Generation.

And finally, I'm going to leave you with a taste of one of my favourite aliens - the Clockwork Aliens (Doctor Who).

Now, these are probably better classified as alien robots, as they seem to function under only one directive and have no willpower to do otherwise. In that sense, they are slightly terrifying, because they're taking people's internal organs to make their ship function properly, but they're so beautiful! And imagine they weren't evil killing machines - they would make awesome butlers.

This is far from all of the aliens in the fictional universes of Earth, as it leaves out all books and about a million movies and other TV shows, but it's a start.

31 Days of Planets: Zombie Planet!

Day 28

Watch out - the planet rises from the dead! Sort of. Well, they like to say it has risen from the dead (maybe) but in reality, the scientists just don't know and can't agree.

Fomalhaut b (okay, okay, so I already wrote about this planet) was thought to be just a cloud of dust. Then someone said, "No! I think there's a planet in there!" So they started looking, searching, gazing into the vast expanse of night - until a third party replied, "Well, there's no heat signature. It's just a dust cloud."

Op. Now it's dead. A dead planet.

Well... then they changed their minds. At least, somebody did. They decided that they were seeing a planetary object embedded in a cloud of dust, instead of just, well, a cloud of dust.

So this planet has come back to life via the aid of red tape and limited scientific equipment. 

Humans are great. So are Zombie Planets. 

In conclusion, Happy Halloween, Fomalhaut b!

Picture made by me. More information, here.

31 Days of Planets: Venus

Day 21

Venus: our sister planet, named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. She is quite similar in size and shape to Earth, but she is surrounded by clouds of sulfuric acid, with a dense atmosphere of largely carbon dioxide. Imagine what that would do to your complexion. You trying to lose weight? Don't go to Venus. The atmospheric pressure on Venus is 92 times that of Earth. She has no carbon cycle, no organic life to absorb biomass, her oceans vaporized, free hydrogen has been swept away into interplanetary space by solar winds... but she does have rocks and volcanoes. 

There is one other thing that Venus has: she looks magnificent when she crosses paths with the sun.

I have a sticker of Venus. It looks like this:

In conclusion, Venus might be the goddess of love and beauty, but she probably won't do much for you.

Pictures from Wikipedia.

What is your favourite planet?

31 Days of Planets: Hoth

Day 15

If you think you know what cold is, you should go to Hoth. Antarctica has nothing on Hoth. Hoth is cold. Did I mention? Freezing! Ice, snow, more ice, more snow. It does have some pretty sweet animals, though. A tauntaun and a wampa.

The Rebel Alliance moved here, but a probe eventually discovered the base and then, naturally, Darth Vader showed up. I wonder if he could feel the cold. I know he's half robot, but there's some human skin in there somewhere. He probably has air conditioning inside his suit. 

Hoth is the sixth planet in the Hoth system. It has three uninhabited moons. Aside from the Tauntaun and Wampa, there may also be lichen living in underground caves on this planet.

Hoth looks oddly similar to Uranus to me, but with a bit more detail. Also this is not a photograph.

In conclusion, if you don't like the cold, don't move here. Also, watch Star Wars.

Pictures from Wookipedia.

31 Days of Planets: The Blue Giant

Day 13

A blue giant is actually a star. And it is gorgeous. Watch Stargate Universe.

Since today is the 13th, I felt it was only natural to take a break from planets and do a star. Of course, this star isn't necessarily real...

It looks like this:

When the Destiny (the space ship) was being attacked by bezerker drones, they needed to recharge by flying through a star. So they used a blue giant planet instead of their typical stars. Desperation calls for desperate measures, I suppose.

In conclusion, watch Stargate Universe.

But really, you can read about real blue giants here.

Pictures from Stargate Wiki.

31 Days of Planets: Nibiru

Day 9: Nibiru

Nibiru is a special planet. The reason? Because it's imaginary. It's an imaginary planet that is supposed to collide with Earth in, oh, give or take two months (December 12, 2012). This sneaky planet has decided to do a flyby of Earth, causing us to stop orbiting for five days and switch magnetic poles. The oceans would then migrate to the poles, creating two polar oceans and one giant center continent. And a day would be the length of an entire year - unless of course the planet started spinning again after five days, in which case the oceans would wander back to their original locations and Daylight savings time would be pushed back a few days.

Nibiru is a hoax. But Nibiru would make a great science fiction TV series, if anyone is interested. Maybe I'll write a book - Incoming Planet. Watch your nearest amazon.com. 

As for what Nibiru looks like, I did a simple image search It's quite lovely. It looks like a marble: 

And it comes from a really reliable-looking website.

This one is a "real photo" from NASA, found on ufodigest.com.

And if you're still dying for evidence, check out this one. You can't deny that this is a real picture:

For more information on this impending disaster, you can read this article, the Wikipedia page, or the news.

In conclusion, Nibiru is going to be great fun.

31 Days of Planets: Sedna

Day 6: Sedna (maybe)

The planet Sedna is (maybe) a trans-Neptunian planet, three times as far away from the sun as Neptune. I imagine it would be very cold there. Although it has not yet been formally recognized as a dwarf planet, it is made up of water, methane, and nitrogen ices, and has the longest known orbit of anything in the solar system. One theory suggests that its orbit is evidence for another, larger planet out past Neptune. I like to imagine a huge other planet, one that is way bigger than Jupiter - just enormous! But dark, which makes it hard to see. And it's probably teeming with life that scurries around making nitrogen iced-coffee and digging holes.

Sedna was originally named 2003 VB12, but was renamed after the Inuit goddess of the sea, who is thought to live at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean - also a very cold place. In every single version of the Sedna myth, she gets thrown into the sea and her fingers get chopped off (or fall off) as she tries to cling to the Kayak, and then she sinks the the bottom and becomes the ruler of the underworld or a mighty sea goddess or commander of the fish of the sea. Her fingers became seals and walruses and whales.

Hopefully the same thing didn't happen to the planet - being rejected by it's father, having its fingers cut off and turned into sea creatures, although one theory suggests that it was pulled into its orbit by a passing star, or captured from another star system - like Sedna was captured by the sea.

Here is what Sedna looks like to us right now:

And here is what an artist suggests Sedna might look like: 

And, just to give some perspective, this is what Sedna, Inuit goddess of the sea might look like: 

In conclusion, Sedna (the maybe planet) is intensely intriguing, and I hope they soon discover what exactly it is.

Photos from Wikipedia and DeviantArt.

31 Days of Planets: Eris

Day 5: Eris

Eris is a real planet inside our solar system. Not a myth. Not some suddenly-appearing planet made up by crazy people. Some people claim that the planet Nibiru is actually Eris. This is not true.

Eris is a dwarf planet, probably bigger than Pluto. It resides past Neptune, and is known as a trans-Neptunian dwarf planet. It is the farthest known natural body in our solar system. It has one moon, Dysnomia, and the two were discovered in 2005. Eris was originally known as Xena, or Planet X.

Eris played an important role in modern astronomy - it forced scientists to differentiate between a planet and a dwarf planet. Many people were very upset when Pluto got "downgraded" from a planet - but in truth Pluto is still a planet, just a dwarf-planet. This is an important distinction because as we continue to discover more and more objects out in space, each with unique characteristics, we will have to have some way to classify them - just as scientists classify species and rocks and everything else imaginable. Then our human obsession with organizing everything will slowly be fulfilled in the arena of giant rock-like objects in space.

So what is a planet? you ask. Well, a planet orbits the sun, is massive enough for its own gravity to make it round, and has cleared its neighborhood of smaller objects around its orbit. This definition currently only applies to our solar system, but I'm sure eventually they'll expand it to "orbits a star" and then name everything else differently. Dwarf planets orbit the sun, is massive enough that its shape is controlled by gravitational forces, but hasn't cleared the neighborhood. Dwarf planets are like kids that like to play with other kids. Big planets are like grownups that build giant fences around their yard and call the cops if anyone cuts across the grass.

This is photo taken by the Keck telescope in Hawaii: 

This is an illustration of what Eris and Dysnomia might look like:

In conclusion, Eris is the first of many (planets, but not necessarily in our solar system). I can't wait to see what else is out there!

Pictures from NASA.

The Slow Invasion... is real.

Doctor Who may be predicting the future.

Just this morning, I watched the newest episode  --  about the slow invasion in which small black boxes appeared everywhere: 

Next, Dave and I went to Plum Island.

Plum Island looks more or less like this: 

However, to my dismay, on our way out we saw something that set off all alarm bells...

Black boxes.

And these are not the little paper kind you can print off and make. These are giant wooden boxes that could have real weapons and serious computing abilities...

When these boxes start reproducing, becoming smaller and curiouser, and eventually finding their way into people's homes... then we'll really have something to worry about. 

But we should be find for a while. This doesn't look to be just a slow invasion. More like a reaaalllly reaaaaallly reaallly slow invasion. 

Daleks on the Moon

And how do I know, you ask, that they found Daleks on the moon (they are also on Mars - see here)?

Because, as I was perusing images for a less recent blog post about the moon (mostly), I found these:

This was found in the NASA archives.

This was found in the NASA archives, as well.

This was found in the San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive.

This was found in the George Eastman House collection.

You may have to peruse closely, but trust me - the evidence is there. 

I'm hoping that if I post enough pictures of Daleks, the Doctor will show up.

How well do you know Jupiter?

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Pictures of Earth, Pictures of Mars

This is a stock photo. It is Earth in a drop of liquid.

If you zoomed in, and then zoomed in some more, and then kept zooming and zooming and zooming and zooming and zooming... you might see something like this:

or this: 

or this:

or this.

This is Mars. It's a photo from NASA.

If you zoomed in, and then zoomed in some more, and kept zooming and zooming and zooming and zooming and zooming... you might see this (which would make any geologist very excited):

or this:

or this:

or this.

Just think: in the next 50 years, we'll be there. Some how, some way, we'll be there. 

The future isn't that far off.