Tag Archives: aliens

Friday’s Top Five

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Here’s the countdown:

5. Say Hello to the Aliens!

220px-Johannes_Kepler_1610

Thanks to a fantastical machine that would leave its namesake believing in witchcraft, NASA’s Kepler space telescope has pinpointed more than 1,200 new planets in the universe. It’s been estimated there are BILLIONS of planets (I think it was Carl Sagan who said that). So far we’ve only found a few of these billions (and by found, I mean hypothesized based on such magic as the wobbling of light from distant stars). Now we’ve verified a whole lot more. Can’t wait for the day when we actually visit these planets. Well considering I won’t live that long (and neither will you) I’ll just have to settle for exploring via sci-fi. (The dude in the photo is Johannes Kepler, a 17th century German astronomer. NASA stole his name for their pet project. Not sure why.).

4. Throat-biting Rick Grimes

This one’s a throwback. It’s from a few years ago, but it’s a classic. The Walking Dead is a seductive show. It’s a soap opera disguised as a horror show, a soap opera about power, not love. And no one pulls off the melodrama quite like Rick Grimes. The Georgia cop turned reluctant survivalist is a strange hero. On one hand, he’s fearless and crafty, willing to do whatever it takes to keep his makeshift family alive. On the other hand, he’s a melancholy head case (he was getting phone calls from his dead wife!) who is prone to drama. And this scene, where Rick bites the neck out of a man (human, not zombie) is either the pinnacle or the low point of Rickness. But in all fairness, his son was about to get raped. I’m on team Rick here, and that’s why throat-biting Rick Grimes is my spirit animal. No one does tortured crazy like Rick.

3. Music Not Meant for the Masses

I recently stumbled upon John Grant after spending some time descending into a YouTube rabbit hole (something about Prince and Sinead O’Connor…). Grant was being interviewed in Icelandic, then he launching into song with Sinead as his backup singer(!). It turns out this lumberjack-looking American is actually the love child of Karen Carpenter raised by the caretaker of a sanatarium. Not really, but that’s what his voice sounds like. He’s an odd duck unafraid to put his oddities on full display. So as obsessive I get, I’ve been listening to him over and over (along with Gojira, Grimes, Tame Impala, and FKA Twigs – don’t ask). Queen of Denmark is one of my favorites. And apparently Sinead too, since she covered it.

2. May

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It’s not my favorite month of the year – that would be my birthday month of February. May is a close second, this year especially. Our winter sucked. We got barely any snow, and I only went snowboarding five times. The conditions were…well, sucky. A bad day of snowboarding is still better than any other day, but I expected better. If the winter was too warm, then spring has been too cold — damp, London rainy chill. . That’s all changing now that May is here. It’s turning beautiful : blue skies, sunshine, warmth on the skin. May would have won the week, but it can’t top snow…

1. Jon Snow Has Had Enough of Your Shit, Night’s Watch

Oh, Game of Thrones. Like The Walking Dead, you’re another soap opera disguised as a beautifully written and acted drama with cinematic production values. After you killed off the hero, and then the hero’s wife and son at THE WORST WEDDING EVER, I realized you would never give me the justice I craved. Sure, you killed off the bad seed inbred golden boy Joffrey, but his vile mother Cersei is still alive. Last you killed Jon Snow, he of the resting bitch face and high moral character. Of course he would die, he’s a Stark after all. But in one of the worst kept secrets in GoT fandom, Jon Snow was resurrected by Melisandre (who should never take off that necklace). Finally we had some justice. That alone would be enough to earn the number one spot, but then we got to see Jon preside over the hanging of his murderers, including that surly teenager Ollie. I cheered when the brat’s eyes bulged and his face turned purple. the scene ended with Jon Snow taking off his ugly feather coat off and quitting the Night’s Watch. If you’re going to quit, do it Jon Snow style.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aliens: do they look like us?

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If anyone’s noticed, one of my minor obsessions is alien life. I’m not one of those who believes we’re being probed by Roswell-style aliens. My interest is more about fantasy (and maybe reality). If there’s a book or movie with aliens in it, chances are I’ll be interested. Take one of my favorite TV shows: Farscape. Human dude gets mixed up with a bunch of renegade aliens. What more could you ask for?

FARSCAPE

But I also love the scientific aspect of the search for extraterrestrial life. As we discover more Earth-sized planets, the question of extraterrestrials becomes more of when we’ll find them, rather than do they exist.

I’ve written about why we haven’t found any evidence of alien life yet. (short answer — we don’t know why). If we do find intelligent life, what will it look like? For Star Trek alienyears I’ve thought that alien life would be wildly different from our own. Not like Star Trek, where the aliens are basically humans with a few bumps and ridges, and a little different hue. Instead, the real aliens would, due to evolutionary forces unique to their home worlds, be more bizarre than we could fathom.

Not so, says a professor named Simon Conway Morris from Cambridge University in England. Evolution is a streamlined process — it selects the features best suited to thrive in life. And independently, different species evolve similar features (eyes, for instance). If this takes place on Earth, then the same process would apply on other planets.

He also states that evolution has produced life suitable for its environment. If you want a sophisticated plant, then you design it as a flower or tree. Aquatic animals would be fish-like, and creatures that fly would have wings.

The question remains, though, what about intelligent life? Could we assume that Calculating Godthey would look like us only because we’re the first intelligent species on the planet?

In his novel Calculating God, sci-fi writer Robert J. Sawyer had a intriguing take on ETs. Two different intelligent species contact humans. Both are similar proportion and of similar intelligence to humans, though one is a spider-like creature. These aliens were very like us, suggesting that intelligence is linked less to physical resemblance than to shared understanding, beliefs and values.

I guess someday we’ll find out the truth. Or maybe we truly are alone after all.

Are ancient aliens ignoring us?

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We’re obsessed with life beyond Earth.

For a while, we thought we might find it close to home. Venus turned out to be a hellish bust, and Mars is turning up nothing but red rocks. SETI has been beaming a hello for decades, but no one has greeted our call. So, unless you believe that Roswell is indeed the site of an alien vacation community, we’ve come up with nothing.

SETI

That hasn’t stopped us from making it a focal point of sci-fi and pop culture, from HG Wells’ vicious War of the star trekWorlds to the community of agreeable, and sometimes sexy, aliens embodied in the Star Trek series and movies.

And, the research to identify life supporting planets is going full steam, with hundred potential candidates identified to date. Now, we may be able to expand our time frame as well.

First, the title of this io9.com article — Freakishly Old System of Planets Hint at Ancient Alien Civilizations — is misleading. Nowhere does the writer, or the research, state that we’ve found any kind of proof (or even a hint) of alien life.

But what we’ve discovered—that rocky planet systems are billions of years older than we first thought—is intriguing in its implication. And what is this implication? That life, and advanced civilizations, have had several billions of years in which to develop.

Our universe is considered to be about 13.8 billion years old, and according to the article, scientists have detected a planet system that is about 11.2 billion years old. Before this, scientists didn’t believe that rocky planets capable of sustaining life could have formed that early in our universe’s life span. Now they know different.

But this leads to the inevitable question: if there are so many planets that could potentially support life, and if these planets have existed for at least 11 billion years, then why isn’t our universe teeming with life? Surely there would be ONE advanced civilization that would have colonized the stars. Was there NEVER a planet capable of supporting life? Or, did they ALL fail to advance to the point we have?

Revelation_Space_cover_(Amazon)One of my favorite sci-fi writers, Alastair Reynolds, explored this very topic in his book Revelation Space. His world view was bleak: advanced civilizations destroyed each other, leaving behind a higher power that would snuff out advanced civilizations whenever they reached the point of breaking their planetary bounds.

If that’s true, then we’re in danger.

Or, maybe there are tons of aliens out there, and they don’t find us interesting enough to return our calls.

Mars attacked!

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Was there once a grand civilization on our neighboring planet that was annihilated by a nuclear attack? One researcher says yes. While it’s impossible to prove (for now), the sci-fi geek in me loves this story.

mars

Mars has gotten some, but not enough, attention in the world of sci-fi. H.G. Wells got the ball rolling with War of the Worlds, where we were attacked by Martians (I loved the Tom Cruise movie as well). There have been sporadic Martian-themed stories, including Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red/Blue/Green Mars trilogy. And there have also been one-off stories, like Doctor Who‘s The Waters of Mars episode.

mars and earth

But these are all fictional. What about the real Mars? The red planet is smaller than ours, colder, and less hospitable to human life (and any life, so far). It’s long been theorized that the Mars of the distant past was a very different planet, one capable of supporting life.

John Brandenburg, a plasma physicist, speculates that Mars once had a civilization as advanced as the ancient Egyptians. But this civilization caught the attention of some nasty aliens, who nuked these Martians, and rendered the planet uninhabitable. His evidence? The large number of nuclear isotopes detected on Mars.

Nuclear-Explosion-001

The takeaway, according to Brandenburg, is that we’d better get our butts (and not just rovers) to Mars ASAP, and figure out exactly what happen, lest it happen to us as well. See, we’re too noisy, blasting our radio signals out into the universe. Eventually, the Martian killers are bound to notice us.

He has a point. If there is a superior civilization out there, they may very well decide to rid themselves of any competition. And we’re pretty much defenseless. But what can I do about a high-tech alien force attacking? Not much of anything, so I’ll file that away in the “Things I cannot control, so therefore I won’t worry about it” drawer.

The idea that there were advanced civilizations on Mars that suffered a nuclear holocaust intrigues the sci-fi fan in me. Was Mars nuked? I don’t know nearly enough about the science to say no, though I think that Brandenburg is taking one too many leaps of logic. Nevertheless, the nuking of Mars makes great sci-fi fodder.

Where is everyone? (by everyone, I mean aliens)

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I’m not alone, not by a longshot, when I say I love the idea of space exploration and possible alien cultures.

Look at some of the staples of pop culture — Star Trek and Star Wars, for example. These classic sci-fi stories have given us thrilling images of new worlds and aliens of all sorts. We can add one of my favorites, SyFy’s brutally cancelled Farscape, and one of the newest movie franchises, Guardians of the Galaxy (highly recommended, btw).

Farscape

In all of these, the universe is thick with life. There are countless races of intelligent—and not-so-intelligent—life forms, numbering perhaps trillions of individuals.

But, as far as we know, we are utterly alone in the universe, and we don’t know why.

As scientists discover solar system after solar system, with planets in the habitable zone, it’s dawning on us that our planet is not unique. And the logical assumption would be, if Earth is not unique, then we are not either. Surely if life evolved on Earth, over millions of years, to produce a species that is capable of traveling into space, then at least one of these other countless planets would have evolved similar life as well.

But where are they? Set aside the assumptions we’re making, such as that we would even be able to recognize alien life at all. If other species developed interstellar travel, wouldn’t they have found us by now? Wouldn’t their presence have long been known?

Revelation SpaceOne of my favorite sci-fi books, Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds, tackled this question. Reynolds had an intriguing, though wholly fictional answer. (SPOILER WARNING) In Revelation Space, there were indeed alien races spread throughout the universe. But they went to war and ended up wiping each other out. To avoid any such catastrophe, a super-entity was established that would snuff out any civilization that got too big for its britches. How would it to that? Simply by waiting patiently for a curious species to contact it, and then exterminating it.

Another theory for the lack of alien life is more simple. Maybe complex and intelligent life is extremely rare — so rare that we’re it. It’s called the Great Filter theory. Several nearly impossible steps had to be overcome for us to be here.

–the creation of molecules that can reproduce

–the creation of simple single-celled life

–the creation of complex, multi-celled life

And that’s not even getting into such things as the rise of intelligent life capable of traveling into space, while also avoiding threats such as asteroid strikes, nuclear war, radiation bursts from space, and so on.

So, maybe we really are alone, and there is no Star Trek style federation waiting to greet us.

The good news? Maybe we’ve already overcome the biggest hurdles to interstellar life, and the universe is ours for the taking.

See this movie: Edge of Tomorrow

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What do you get when you combine aliens, explosions, and the repeating day motif of Groundhog Day? Tom Cruise’s latest sci-fi action flick Edge of Tomorrow.

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Tom Cruise’s personal life gets a lot of attention, but strip away that nuttiness and what you have is a workhorse actor who knows how to entertain. Whether it’s the Mission: Impossible series, Minority Report, or Oblivion, Cruise is a master at making a damn good action film. Edge of Tomorrow is the latest in his string of successes.

Edge of Tomorrow is based on the Japanese sci-fi novel All You Need Is Kill (great title!) by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. All You Need Is KillThe movie’s plot: an alien race known as mimics has overrun the European continent, and unified forces are gearing up for a D-Day style invasion in France. Major William Cage (Cruise) finds himself on the front lines of the invasion, where he quickly dies. Only he doesn’t. Time resets, and he wakes up the morning before the invasion. He relives the same day, dying again and again. Aided by Sergeant Rita Vratraski (Emily Blunt) the war hero known as “Full Metal Bitch,” he plots to defeat the mimics.

What’s great about Edge of Tomorrow:

–Cruise and Blunt are excellent. This isn’t Oscar bait. We’re not looking for amazing acting. We want skill, competence and relatability. They deliver.

–The action is intense. The battle scenes are breakneck, part video game, part roller coaster.

–Humor. I didn’t think I’d be laughing during a Tom Cruise sci-fi action movie, but the writers were wise to add some funny scenes. On one level, this movie almost calls for it. The humor, which comes mostly from bungled deaths (and repeated days) helps break the tension. It also lets the audience laugh at the overall concept. Cruise plays it well — sometimes he’s clearly ready to die (again).

–The invasion of France has clear and obvious parallels to the Allied invasion of Europe in D-Day during World War II. The writers build a pretty complete world, one that has been at war for a while.

What’s not so great:

mimic3–The aliens were fine. I have no major complaints, but there was nothing particularly novel about them. The special effects were also fine. But I wanted a little more.

–I had a couple of issues with the ending, which I won’t reveal. The best I can say is that it was satisfying. I’ll leave it at that.

Overall, Edge of Tomorrow is a thrill ride of a movie with solid performances, some laughs, and great action scenes that make it worth a trip to the theater.