9/7/2023 0 Comments Space haven alien infection![]() ![]() Flammarion was a French astronomer whose metaphysical interests, if he were pursuing them today, would be labelled New Age. According to Brian Stableford, writing in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, the definitive reference on the genre, Camille Flammarion was the first author to present a popular fictional portrait of truly alien life-forms. It was only after Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s and Charles Darwin’s theories of adaptation and natural selection gained wider acceptance, in the nineteenth century, that writers began to speculate in earnest about the sorts of creatures that might flourish in environments beyond Earth. (And he has a Continental spirit, keeping a mistress-a “pretty little brunette, barely six hundred and sixty fathoms high.”) The Saturnian’s primary fictional purpose, as he visits our planet, is to marvel at the relative puniness of humankind, whom he examines with a very large microscope. The suave Saturnian described by Voltaire in a satirical 1752 story, “Micromégas,” looks like an earthling, except that he’s six thousand feet tall. Far grimmer is “Prometheus,” the latest “Alien” movie the series features an implacable foe that uses our bodies as nests for its young, and likes to chase us through hideous, dripping corridors while baring its hideous, dripping fangs.īefore the nineteenth century, if authors depicted the inhabitants of other planets the aliens were essentially human. The films are an extended pun on the alternate meaning of “alien”: immigrant. The genial “Men in Black” movies suggest that freaky-looking extraterrestrials already live among us, undetected by most citizens and overseen by an agency made up of weary bureaucrats and blasé field officers. This summer, Hollywood franchises espousing each view will be delivering their newest installments. Sometimes they have no bodies at all.įor all their diversity, these creatures tend to fall into one of two groups: those we can live with and those we can’t. There are fictional aliens that resemble little green men, mollusks, insects, plants, and minerals. And so we have invented extraterrestrials of every conceivable kind. Although conclusive evidence for life on Mars (or on any other foreign planet) has yet to turn up, humans are an impatient species. Thirty-six years after the Viking landers collected soil on Mars, scientists can still make news by declaring that the samples indicate the presence of microbes. In 1996, a NASA study caused a sensation when it announced the mere possibility of fossilized bacteria in a meteorite believed to be from the Red Planet. Since these are the major tools available, it doesn’t bode well for actually identifying life in space, which will probably look weird and microbial.Bacteria are not known for their ability to stir the imagination, but there is at least one reliable exception: bacteria from Mars. When trying to discover new microbes, genetic tools don’t always provide clear answers, and it is incredibly difficult and time-consuming to attempt to culture these microbes in a lab from a small sample. The problem: we haven’t yet invented to necessary technology to identify these kinds of organisms. On Earth, these places are toxic to human life - yet they are capable of hosting a huge diversity of microbial life, including life forms that biologists still can’t identify. Extraterrestrial environments analogous to Earthly environments are usually limited to things like sulfuric acid caves. ![]() Penelope Boston, NIACĪctually identifying whether something is alive or just a weirdly shaped mineral is a huge challenge for astrobiologists looking for aliens. ![]() Boston featured some of the yet-unidentified life forms (like Sinus Infection Blue Goo and Gelatinous Glop) that have been found in caves as part of her presentation. ![]()
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