Horror and the deep blue sea

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea published in 1870 by French writer Jules Verne can be considered the first story to introduce the life-forms of the deep blue sea to the public, even if the title is a reference to the distance traveled by the "Nautilus", not the reached depth. The novel was adapted into various movies since 1907. Probably the most well-known adaptation is the version of 1954 with the quite charming special effects and marine scenery.A darker approach to the sea was adopted in the 1989 science fiction movie The Abyss, where the crew of an experimental underwater oil platform encounters strange life forms in a depth of more than 5.500m. The expected success of the movie (the production was so elaborate that the final release was postponed) generated a lot of copycats: Leviathan (1989), DeepStar Six (1989), The Evil Below (1989), Lords of the Deep (1989), and The Rift/Endless Descent (1989) - all these movies follow a very similar plot: the crew of a submarine or underwater station is entrapped with an unknown life form (alien, mutant, sea monster, prehistoric monster) in a confined space. Proteus (1995) and Deep Blue Sea (1999) tried a decade later to revive the genre of underwater horror. DeepStar Six is insofar interesting as the main monster is a surviving prehistoric eurypterid.

Since antiquity, the unknown regions of the oceans were populated by terrible monsters.

Only with the beginning of the age of exploration in the 15th century almost all the monsters vanished slowly from the maps, but still until the 19th century the sea floor remained unknown. It was considered almost impossible that life forms could survive in an environment without light, low temperatures and high pressure. With the first submarine telegraph cables in the mid of the 19th century, it was discovered that life existed also in great depth, as the cables when lifted back to the surface were encrusted by organisms.
The Challenger expedition (1872-1876) was an ambitious research project that recovered samples of the sea floor and described for the first time the life forms of the abyssal zone (4.000-6.000m). However apart from these single glimpses there was no possibility to explore and observe this extreme and vast environment.

January 23, 1960, two men, Jacques Piccard and Donald Walsh, observed for the first time the seafloor at a depth of 10.916m in the Mariana Trench. They were surprised to observe various species of fishes and crustaceans swimming around.

In 1977 the crew of the submarine "Alvin" discovered life forms that dwelled in a self-sufficient ecosystem on a volcanic spot in the eastern Pacific, known as the Galapagos Rift. The hot fluids coming from the hydrothermal vents provided nutrients and minerals used by certain bacteria species to acquire energy from chemical reactions. These bacterial mats provide the base of the ecosystem; some organisms, like giant clams and worms, also host the bacteria in special apposite organs and feed on them. The movie Leviathan (1989) features giant tube worms.
 

Research in the last years has shown that the assemblage of organisms differs between the single spots with hydrothermal vents. For example the classic tube worms Riftia pachyptila and giant clams Calyptogena magnifica are found only in the eastern parts of the Pacific Ocean. In the Scotia Sea we find the "Yeti-Crab" Kiwa hirsute. Based on the species-association at least eleven types of hydrothermal vent biota were proposed.

Alien (1979) - A Creature Feature Review

In the movie "Alien" (1979) the spaceship "Nostromo" is attacked by a life-form encountered on LV-426, a barren Moon orbiting a gas giant in the Zeta Reticuli system, 39 light years away from Earth. According to the lore in the Alien universe, it is a world of volcanic origin, covered in rocks like granite and basalt. The moon's indigenous atmosphere was described as "primordial", consisting mainly of nitrogen, water vapor, carbon dioxide, trace particles of oxygen and small concentrations of methane and ammonia.  

When Alien was released it quickly terrified audiences worldwide. Its unexpected mix of classic horror motives, a relentless predator is killing one by one the crew of a ship, and science-fiction, its a spaceship and the killer is a completely alien life-form, got at first mixed reviews, however, over the years Alien had come to be regarded as one of the best horror and science-fiction films ever made. In the early 70s Dan O'Bannon had written a dark science-fiction comedy film - Dark Star - featuring a cheap looking alien invading a space ship lost in space. O'Bannon recognized the potential of the story and wanted to do a more serious alien film. He began to work on a story involving the discovery of an alien life-form on a remote planet. During a work-related visit to Paris he discovered the artwork of Chris Foss, Moebius and especially H.R. Giger, giving him more ideas for his story. In collaboration with Ronald Shusett and using an early story involving Gremlins infiltrating a B-17 bomber during World War II. he finished the script. After noting the number of times the word alien appeared in the script the project was called Alien. In Alien the crew of a mining vessel has to deal with a fast growing alien life-form hiding inside the air conducts of the spaceship. Shusett suggested that one of the crew members be implanted with an alien parasite to explain how the life-form, discovered at first as egg in a derelict alien spaceship, came on board of the ship. 

The Alien is supposedly a perfect silicon-based life form. According to canon the incarnation of the extraterrestrial xenomorph - as imagined by Swiss artist H.R. Giger - is protected by an outer silicious skeleton from environmental factors, surviving even for a short period in outer space. This resistant shell is also very useful to contain the acid blood of the creature or to merge with its mechanical environment.

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.

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")

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.