The Boogens (1981) - A Creature Feature Review

The Boogens is a B-monster movie from 1981 involving even geology (sort of…). After a terrible accident, the town of Silver City is forced to shut down all mining activities, but when the collapsed mine is re-opened years later by a construction team something terrible is released. The Boogens, weird, multi-tentacled, bloodsucking, bullet- and dynamite-proof turtles (yes, turtles!).

Unfortunately, it's a quite dull movie, following the "stalking monster" ("it's somewhere but you don't see it until the end of the movie") tradition made popular at the time by Alien, premiered just two years earlier. But Alien is, without doubt, the better movie beginning with the acting and ending with the special effects.

Whole New Worlds Made Of Sapphires and Rubies

Astronomers have found a new class of planets, abundant in the chemical compounds that make sapphires and rubies.

"Diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires. All the crystalline forms that you cherish above all things" - from the episode “Cat's Paw”.

Earth is a planet composed mostly of iron. The inner core is believed to be an iron-nickel alloy and the mantle, making up one-third of Earth's volume, is composed of Bridgmanite, a magnesium-iron-silicate. Earth's crust contains iron, oxygen, magnesium and silicon, with traces of sulfur, nickel, calcium, and aluminum added to the mix. However, planets outside our solar system may display a very alien composition, depending on their origin.

The chemical composition of a planet depends on the interaction of two factors, the chemical composition of the dust and gas disk around the newborn star from which the planet forms and where in this protoplanetary disc the planet forms. Farther out in the disc, in the cooler zones, elements such as silicon, iron and magnesium will form grains and clumps. Gravity will pull together the pieces until enough mass is collected to form a planet. It is likely that the rocky planets in our solar system, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, formed this way. Close to the star the temperature is rising and lighter elements, like silicon, magnesium, aluminum and calcium, start condensing into the planetary building compounds. A planet composed mostly from such elements would have 10 to 20 percent lower densities than Earth.

Researchers from the Universities of Zurich in Switzerland and Cambridge in the United Kingdom discovered three large planets that may confirm this theoretical model. HD 219134 b, located just 21 light-years away, in the constellation of Cassiopeia, with an orbit of just 3 days; 55 Cancri e, 41 light-years away, with an orbit of just 18 hours; and WASP-47 e, located 870 light-years away, also with an 18-hour orbit. HD219134 b is a super-Earth with a mass almost five times that of Earth, yet its density is surprisingly low. The planet most likely does not have a massive core of iron but is rich in calcium and aluminum. The chemical composition would allow the existence of large quantities of aluminum oxides on the planet. On Earth, crystalline aluminum oxide forms the mineral corundum. If the aluminum oxide contains traces of iron, titanium, cobalt or chromium, it will form the noble varieties of the mineral corundum, gemstones like the blue sapphire, the red ruby and the pink-orange padparadscha.

The first image ever taken by humans of the whole Earth, probably photographed by William Anders.