H.P.Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space

“The Colour Out of Space” was one of H.P.Lovecraft's favorite short stories, written in March of 1927 and published in September of the same year in the American science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. In his later years Lovecraft, famous for his horror stories involving demons and monsters, tended to write things based more on real science and the Colour Out of Space is a good example for his mix of science-fiction and horror.

In Lovecraft's story, a meteorite falls to Earth, landing near the farm owned by Nahum Gardner. The news about the unusual event quickly spread and so the next day three professors from Miskatonic University arrive at the farm to examine the meteorite. Already now something seems to be odd, as Nahum remarks that the stone from outer space seems to "had shrunk," pointing to "the big brownish mound above the ripped earth and charred grass near the archaic well-sweep in his front yard." However, the professors dismiss at first this observation remarking that “…stones do not shrink.” The professors collect a sample, still emanating heat. The professors take the sample back to Miskatonic University to run a series of physical and chemical tests with very baffling results. The sample reacts with no known chemicals and “…at the end of the tests the college scientists were forced to own that they could not place it. It was nothing of this earth, but a piece of the great outside; and as such dowered with outside properties and obedient to outside laws.” The scientists return to the Gardner Farm and visit the impact site once again, only to discover that the meteorite is quickly vanishing. As one of the scientists takes a last sample, a strange nodule embedded in the rock is discovered. Hit by a geological hammer the nodule bursts with a “nervous little pop” but apparently nothing is released.

It is soon discovered that something, resembling a colour, coming from the meteorite contaminated the groundwater on the farm of Nahum.

Lovecraft was very interested in his contemporary science and extensively read on geology and especially astronomy. Likely stories about "Thunderstones", which supposedly fell from the sky during lightning storms, in Charles Fort's "The Book of the Damned" (1919) gave Lovecraft the first idea for his story. In the March 11, 1927 issue of the magazine "Science" an article covers the Pons-Winnecke Comet, which at the time was going to pass very close to Earth. Maybe this news inspired Lovecraft's final draft, as the Thunderstone is identified and described in great detail as a meteorite coming from outer space. Lovecraft described the unusual physical properties, focusing on its strange property to shrink over time, to emanate a constant heat and glow in strange colors. Lovecraft was aware of radioactive decay and likely used radioactive substances like Actinium or Thorium as a source of inspiration, as we are also told that the matrix of the meteorite is soft and malleable, like a metal. Actinium is a soft, silvery-white, radioactive metal, isolated for the first time in the year 1899 by French chemist André-Louis Debierne. 
Real meteorites display a mineral composition different to most rocks found on Earth. The most common type are stony meteorites, consisting of silicate minerals like olivine, pyroxene and traces of iron-nickel alloys. Just one percent of meteorites are pure silicate rocks. The smell of some fragments resembles asphalt or solvents, evidence for 4.6 billion years old carbon-compounds preserved inside the rock. Four to five percent of all space debris is represented by iron meteorites, consisting of an almost pure iron-nickel alloy with eventually embedded silicate crystals. From Lovecraft's description, the fictional meteorite resembles an iron meteorite, even if its physical properties match no known elements.

Meteorite collected in 1749 in Krasnojarsk (Russia), an extraterrestrial rock with olivine crystals embedded in a nickel-iron alloy matrix.

That night a thunderstorm is approaching the city of Arkham and the meteorite, still in its crater, is hit by a series of thunderbolts and the rock completely vanishes. Soon thereafter things start to get weird. Insects and plants display unusual colors and horrible mutations. Toward the end of the story, people get insane and are consumed by an unknown sickness. It seems that something coming from the meteorite contaminated the soil and the groundwater. That unseen types of radiation existed was clear since 1895, when Wilhelm Rontgen discovered X-rays. In 1911 Austrian physicist Victor Hess discovered the cosmic background radiation, high-energy radiation originating from outer space, and also that Earth's surface is slightly radioactive, the result of traces of radioactive elements found in minerals and rocks. At Lovecraft's time, it was also known that radiation can affect the growth of plants and cause mutations. In the early 1920s a scandal involving the use of radioactive radium in self-luminous paint, which led to radiation poisoning in female workers at three different factories in the United States, made the health risks of radioactivity clear. Lovecraft never identifies the sickness in his story, however, he describes its effects as consuming living tissue and a sense of burning, similar to radiation poisoning.

Disaster Movies With An Impact

Earth is hit by dust-sized meteorites estimate 19,000 to 26,000 times per year. Earth's atmosphere is sufficient to stop meteorites up to a diameter of 10 meters. Fragments can still reach the surface. In1947 an iron-meteorite exploding above the Sikhote-Alin mountains in Siberia sending 100 tons of materials towards the surface, forming there 200 craters. Such celestial bodies are expected to impact every 10 years with earth, bolides, like the one responsible for Tunguska, are estimated to hit every hundred years.

Movies that deal with the impact of a meteorite on earth have a great advantage that they can almost completely define the scenario. No reference exists how an impact would destroy a city or the earth itself. Large impacts are relatively rare in historic times, the most famous (and still controversial) is the Tunguska event in 1908, however, because of the remoteness of the Siberian taiga the damage and the fatalities were limited. Interests on this kind of catastrophe aroused late, only in the mid 20th century the possibility that earth can be hit by large chunks of extraterrestrial material became largely publicized.

In 1994 the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted spectacularly on Jupiter, the event was strongly publicized by most mass media. Maybe influenced by this great interest by the public, since 1997 various movies on meteorites were released. All the movies have little story and content, a disadvantage of impacts is their supposedly short duration. The disintegration and explosion of the extraterrestrial body is followed immediately by firestorms and shockwaves - thus a movie to build suspense has to put the impact to the end. An advantage of an impact is the supposed catastrophic effects, especially of large objects more than 10km in diameter, which can affect the surface of earth worldwide.

"Asteroid" (1997) is a cheap production for television. After the discovery of the approaching asteroid, laser-beams are used to destroy it. However some fragments reach earth and still manage to destroy some cities.

In the more expensive, but nevertheless also stupid, "Armageddon" (1998, 140 million in the budget) a crew of unsympathetically characters is sent onto the approaching asteroid with an estimated diameter of more than 1.000km (the size of Texas) to detonate an atomic bomb and disintegrate the mass. The bomb is planted in just 250m depth on a more than 1.000km large mass - why even bother to drill? Also by detonating the bomb, and considering the inertia of the asteroid, simply a rain of minor chunks will bombard earth - causing worldwide havoc.
The introduction of the movie also mentions the Chicxulub-impact - it happened in the past, it will happen again.
Also, the "Super Mario Bros." movie (1993) starts with the premise of the Chicxulub-impact. Here the cosmic rock ripped apart space-time and produces an alternative earth, still ruled by the descendants of dinosaurs.

"Deep Impact" (1998, 75 million in the budget) was released 2 months before "Armageddon"and both movies struggled about the money of spectators- in the end, "Deep Impact" stole 350 million, "Armageddon" stole 500 million from the public. In this scenario, it is an 11km in diameter large comet that will hit earth.

Also in this movie, atomic bombs are used to prevent the imminent impact, however also here chunks arrive at earth, and even if the biosphere is not destroyed completely, still millions of people die.
"Meteorites!" is another TV-production from 1998 dealing with a shower of meteorites that cause havoc and destruction in a small American town. "Tycus" (1998) and "The Apocalypse" (surprisingly released in 1997) are also both cheap productions intended for the video-market and dealing somehow with comets. "Meteor Apocalypse" (2009) is produced and distributed by The Asylum Films, a company famous for their movies ripoffs. Here the melting ice from a comet contaminates the groundwater of earth.

A much earlier movie on meteorites is "Meteor" (1979), with an only 8km in diameter large meteorite that will hit earth in 6 days. To build up suspense smaller chunks (it seems that meteorites in movies never travel alone, however, we could assume that gravitational forces split up larger asteroids/comets, like Shoemaker-Levy 9) hit earth also during the last week of the earth. Finally, again rockets are used to blast the nearby meteor into pieces, but again chunks fall on earth causing havoc. The special effects are terrifying cheap, even considering the year.

The movie mentions also the source of the idea of using bombs to stop the meteor: "Project Icarus", developed in 1968 it was an assignment by Professor Paul Sandorff for a group of MIT graduate students to design a way to deflect asteroid "1566 Icarus", found to be on a collision course with planet Earth, using rockets. Just in 1960 the geologist Eugene Shoemaker settled the debate about the origin of a crater in Arizona, confirming an older hypothesis that it was not of volcanic origin but formed 50.000 years ago by an impact.

However, the prototype for all these movies seems to be "When Worlds Collide" (1951), where an entire planet is hurling towards earth. The movie concentrates mostly on the construction of a 20th-century ark, a spaceship that will evacuate samples of animals and a bunch of people to a new home.

"The Day The Sky Exploded" (1958) is an Italian science-fiction story with a slightly modified

version of the asteroid-scenario: here a lost spaceship with an atomic engine first explodes inside a swarm of asteroids, changing their orbit towards earth.
To prevent the final impact all nations of earth fire contemporary their nuclear weapons towards the swarm.
It's interesting to note that movies produced previously of 1960 (when most advances in the investigation of impacts were done) use mostly planets rather than asteroids as a threat to the earth.

"Planet on the Prowl" (1966) is another Italian movie, following the tradition of meteors-movies, however here it is the gravitational force that unleashes storms, waves and disasters on earth. A team is sent into space to destroy the planet, but here they discover that the celestial body is a living (!) cybernetic organism that will not simply surrender without a fight. A very similar plot was already used by director Antonio Margheriti in "Battle of the Worlds" (1961), where the mainframe of an alien spaceship, mimicking a planet, is attacking earth.

KAY, G. & ROSE, M. (2006): Disaster Movies. A Loud, Long, Explosive, Star-Studded Guide to Avalanches, Earthquakes, Floods, Meteors, Sinking Ships, Twisters, Viruses, Killer Bees, Nuclear Fallout, and Alien Attacks in the Cinema!!!! Chicago Review Press: 402

Star Trek Fact Or Fiction: Alien Minerals

"Obsession" (1967).

During the Hadean Eon, earth’s first 500 million years, prior to the origin of life, an alien mineral collector may have been disappointed on the diversity of minerals found on the planet. Minerals were limited due to the lack of water and plate tectonics to minerals that could form by crystallization from magma and regional metamorphism by impacts. Comets may bring some water onto earth and now minerals formed by serpentinization, evaporation and hydrothermal alteration were possible. Mineralogists, based on such premises, have proposed a preliminary list of 420 plausible minerals for the Hadean. As earth cooled down and the meteorite bombardment ceased, water condensed from the atmosphere and the first oceans formed. Earth today is still is a water world, with large oceans, polar caps of ice, and an atmosphere rich in water vapor. Many minerals form from other minerals reacting with water or contain water in their crystalline structure. Plate tectonics constantly reshapes the planet and brings minerals formed deep within the planet to its surface. Two-thirds of Earth's minerals emerged only after the first life appeared some 3.7 billion years ago and changed forever the chemical processes occurring on earth. For example, early microorganisms released oxygen into the atmosphere. The free oxygen reacted with other elements and existing minerals, forming new ones. Since then minerals are constantly formed by volcanic and tectonic processes, water-rock interactions and biological activity. Nowadays 5,000 minerals have been found on Earth and every year some new ones are discovered.

 Spessartine-Garnet on Feldspar, Shigar Valley, Pakistan.

Dutch graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972).

There are about 15,300 possible ways to combine the known elements. However, even if we didn't yet discover all terrestrial minerals, it's unlikely that all possible combinations will ever be present on our planet.

We know by analyzing the light of distant stars, that other stars, and likely star systems, display different ratios of elements if compared to our system. As the star and the planets form from the same accretion disk, knowing the chemical composition of the star can provide also some information on the orbiting planets. As the chemical composition of an alien planet will differ from the beginning, also its mineralogy will be different in the end. 

The exoplanet 55 Cancri e is roughly twice Earth’s radius, but just eight times its mass. Its density is too low if compared to Earth. Earth is composed mostly of iron, oxygen, magnesium, and silicon, with some sulfur, nickel, calcium, and aluminum added to the mix. Observing the composition of the planet's host star, astronomers discovered a high concentration of carbon and oxygen. It's likely that most minerals on 55 Cancri e are based on a combination of the two elements, forming less dense minerals as terrestrial silicates. Surprisingly enough carbon minerals are rare on Earth. Just fifty have been identified on Earth and most are associated with life, forming by alteration of organic remains, like decaying biomass or derived from coal and oil. Likely here life "hijacked" carbon, so that C-minerals formed by pure inorganic processes are less common.

Alien minerals will also "evolve" together with their planet. Depending on the presence of water, type of tectonics, atmosphere or even life various minerals may form.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard kept a small transparent crystal on the desk in his ready room aboard the USS Enterprise-D. He often played with the small stone when he had to make an important decision. (TNG: "Conspiracy", "Where Silence Has Lease", "Suddenly Human", "A Matter of Time", "The Masterpiece Society", and more) His first officer, William T. Riker, also did so on occasion. (TNG: "Gambit, Part I")