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.

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")

Geological TOS Review: Episode #7 - "What are Little Girls Made Of"

In the Star Trek episode “What are Little Girls Made Of” a vast system of subterranean ruins is discovered on the planet Exo-III. As the sun of the star system is fading, surface temperatures are below -100°C and the former inhabitants constructed a vast system of underground caverns to survive beneath the frozen surface, eventually perishing anyway.

Not only aliens, also humans dig into planets in the Star Trek universe. In the episode "The Devil in the Dark" the Enterprise visits a mining colony on the planet Janus VI, or more precise, inside the planet, as the mine is a large underground facility.

People were excavating tunnels way back in the Bronze Age. An 82 ft long tunnel in Tyrol, used to mine for copper ore, has been dated to 2800 BCE. In historic times, tunnels were constructed to provide water for settlements, like Mycenae around 1200 BCE and Jerusalem around 1000 BCE. The 541 ft long Malpas-Tunnel in France, constructed in 1679-1681, was the first traffic tunnel entirely excavated with the help of gunpowder. 

Humans nowadays create vast tunnel systems beneath cities, rail and road tunnels beneath mountains and even seas, mines to extract ore and boreholes that penetrate deep into Earth's crust. Especially during the great acceleration during the industrial revolution humans started to excavate large cavities, being orders of magnitude greater in scale as animal burrows.

 WATERS et al. 2018

Such cavities and galleries have a high potential for long-term preservation, as they are safe from surface erosion some will be preserved for millions and even billions of year into the future.

Astronomers spot real-life Tatooine

 The famous binary sunset on Tatooine, from the movie Star Wars (1977).

Researchers have spotted a super-Jupiter orbiting a star in a three-sun system 320 light-years from us. Preliminary data suggest that the gas giant - named HD 131399Ab - is about four times the mass of Jupiter and orbits the largest and brightest of the three stars (which has about 1.8 times the mass of our sun) once every 550 years or so. The other two suns in the system, smaller stars that orbit each other relatively tightly and quickly, lie somewhere between 45 billion and 60 billion kilometers away.

Measurements suggest that HD 131399Ab’s atmosphere contains water vapor and methane, and that the planet’s cloud tops are about 850°K (577°C). 

The movie Pitch Black (2000) actually features a multiple star system with three suns.

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. 

Geological TOS Review: Episode #5 - "The Enemy Within"

During a specimen-gathering mission on planet Alpha 177, a transporter malfunction creates an evil duplicate of Captain Kirk. Apparently, the transporter malfunction is caused by interference of the transporter technique with a magnetic, yellow ore found on the planet’s surface. The mineral is not identified in the episode but seems to possess some alien properties.

In many episodes, the crew of the Enterprise visits mining colonies or is on a mission to search for valuable minerals and crystals. There exists even a geological tricorder for prospecting resources, designed for analyzing rock samples and comparing them to the records memorized in the mineralogical database of the federation. By convention, the names of terrestrial minerals (a crystalline combination of one or various elements) end with the suffix "-ite", the denominations of elements with the suffix "- ium", "-um", "-on", "-gen" or "-ine". Unfortunately it seems that this nomenclature is not always applied with the necessary scientific accuracy in the 23th century. But to be fair, many of the minerals are unknown to the present day. And that's accurate, as there are indeed elements found only in stars and outer space, like Technetium, that don't form naturally on Earth.

Could such non-terrestrial elements form also extraterrestrial minerals? 

There are around 7,000 minerals known on Earth, but we still know little about other worlds in comparison. Over 300 minerals have been identified in meteorites. The number of minerals identified on planetary bodies is smaller and mainly detected by remote sensing or exploration with robots.  Around 130 minerals were discovered so far on Mars and 80 on the Earth's Moon. As some of those minerals were formed under conditions that don't exist on Earth, such as low gravity, or the complete absence of liquid water, many are indeed unknown in the Earth's environments.

A curious scientific blooper. In the episode part of the landing party is stranded on the planet, as the transporter doesn't work, and it is mentioned that the temperatures on the surface drop to -120°C during nighttime. Such temperatures would be only possible on a planet without an atmosphere, where temperatures can drop to -200°C. On Earth the coldest temperature ever measured was -90°C during the Antarctic winter.

Star Trek Fact Or Fiction: The Horta

In the 1967 episode "The Devil in the Dark" the Enterprise visits the mining colony on the planet Janus VI, or better, it is located inside in the planet, as the mine is a large underground facility. Soon the crew encounters an unknown creature. The episode later reveals that the alien life-form, named "Horta", comes from within the planet, where suitable conditions for life might exist, and feeds on rocks.

 "It is not life as we know or understand it!"

In October 2018 the discovery of cyanobacteria living 600 meters underground was announced by a research team from Spain, Germany and the United States. The rivers in the  Rio Tinto region in Spain is poisoned by iron and sulfur minerals, also a legacy of mining operations of the past. Because of its apparent inhospitality of life as we know it, this region is studied by astrobiologist, hoping here to understand how life adapts to harsh environments like found on other planets. In a 613-meter deep borehole, the researchers found cyanobacteria living in cracks and crevices of the rocks. Cyanobacteria are able to do photosynthesis, so it was believed that they need sunlight to survive. The cyanobacteria discovered in the borehole apparently feed on chemical reactions involving hydrogen gas, found in air pockets inside the rocks.

Viable cyanobacterial cells (red fluorescent signals) attached to rock fragments. Credit: Puente-Sánchez et al. 2018.

Living bacteria (not depending on sunlight)  were found in boreholes in 5,278 meters depth. Living underground has some advantages. Lifeforms on a planet without atmosphere are protected by the ground from harmful radiations. Even on Earth, as some research suggests, life for a long time existed in the underground. Much of the life that exists beneath the surface is of ancient origins. This realm is inhabited by bacteria, existing already 2 billion years ago. Most likely during most of life's history, for almost 1.5 billion years, organisms living beneath the Earth’s surface outweighed all other life on the planet combined. Exobiologist are especially interested in this observation, as it could vastly expand the habitable zones found in the universe. Even on superficially desolate planets some life could exist, it would just hard to spot it, as it would be hiding deep within the planet.

"They're eggs, aren't they?"

Star Trek Fact Or Fiction: Vulcan

Astronomers announced the discovery of an exoplanet with 8.47 times Earth's mass and twice Earth's radius in the 40 Eridani star system, distant 17 light-years from our Sun. In the Star Trek universe, the Eridani constellation is mentioned as the star system where the planet Vulcan is located, homeworld of Commander Spock.

The USS Enterprise in orbit of Vulcan, from Star Trek: The Original Series - Remastered.

In Star Tek – The Original Series the location of Vulcan was never identified. Vulcan is mentioned as planet various times in the first season, but only in the pilot of the second season, “Amok Time” aired September 15, 1967, it is visited by Commander Spock, Captain Kirk and chief medical officer McCoy. Vulcan is described as an Earth-sized world, mostly covered by deserts and mountains, with a red sky glowing above a barren landscape. 

As it orbits its sun on a very narrow orbit, surface temperatures are higher as on Earth. Also, the atmosphere is very thin, barely breathable, and non-Vulcans have a hard time adapting to the harsh environment. According to Star Trek lore, the desert-planet Vulcan orbits its sun together with the planet T´Khut, a geologically very active lava-planet.

In the movie Star Trek 2, released in 1982, the star 40 Eridani A is mentioned as Vulcan's sun. In 1991 Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, published a short article together with astrophysicists Baliunas, Donahue and Nassiopoulos, arguing that the constellation of Eridani would be the most fitting place for Vulcan. The real 40 Eridani system is a triple star system, with Eridani A as primary star accompanied by a red and a white dwarf star, named respectively Eridani B and Eridiani C. Only Eridani A is shining stable enough to host a hypothetical habitable planet. Eridani B emits too much dangerous radiation and Eridani C is prone to flares, sudden eruptions of energy and matter emitting lethal doses of X-rays. As Eridani A is smaller than our Sun, also the habitable zone, where a planet could exist with liquid water, is narrower. Unlike the fictional planet Vulcan, the real exoplanet seems to be a Super-Earth or a small gas giant. According to the published preliminary results the planet orbits its star in just 39 to 40 Earth days, along the inner limit of the habitable zone.

Geological TOS Review: Episode #3 - "Where No Man Has Gone Before"

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" was the second pilot produced for TOS, but actually the third episode broadcast in the United States. 

Captain Kirk has the command of the Enterprise when a distress signal from a spaceship, lost years before along the borders of the galaxy, is received. Following the signal, they soon encounter an energy field. As they try to fly into the field, impulses of energy cause some members of the crew to develop extrasensory perception abilities. Both helmsman Gary Mitchell and ship's psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Dehner quickly develope god-like powers, threatening to destroy the Enterprise. As there is now way to control Mitchell, Kirk decides to leave Mitchell stranded on the nearby planet Delta Vega, a planet similar to Earth except it has a slightly smaller size, with an automated lithium cracking station operating there. The set of the barren and rocky landscape used to show the planet's surface was recycled from the episode (and rejected original pilot) "The Cage."

The matte painting of the cracking station on Delta Vega.

Mining an extraterrestrial world is still fiction, but science shows that it may be profitable. Asteroids are rich in platinum, iridium, palladium and gold. One hundred tons of rock from an asteroid might today be worth more than 9,000 dollars, compared to just 60 dollars worth the same amount of terrestrial rocks. Estimated 5,000 to ten millions of asteroids can be found near Earth and companies are already dreaming of future prospecting and mining spaceflights. Mining asteroids would not necessarily benefit Earth, as bringing the ore to Earth would be extremely costly, but might benefit nearby colonies, outposts or industrial complexes.

Mitchell escapes from his prison in the cracking station. Dr. Dehner, now also developing unknown powers, is able to distract and injure Mitchell, but is killed in the attempt to stop him. In the end Kirk must face the injured and weakened, but still dangerous Mitchell. After a hand-to-hand battle in the mountains and a ripped shirt, Kirk uses a phaser rifle to create a rock slide, killing Mitchell.

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Star Trek Fact Or Fiction: M-113

In the episode "The Man Trap" Captain Kirk, chief medical officer McCoy and crewman Darnell visit the surface of the fictional planet M-113. Soon they are hunted by a mysterious shape-shifting creature that requires salt to survive and is willing to obtain it by any means necessary. Crewman Darnell is the first victim of the "Salt-Vampire" and also the first "red-shirt" (wearing a blue shirt) to be killed in TOS. It is curious to wonder why the "Salt-Vampire" needs salt on such a planet.

The USS Enterprise flying by planet M-113, which bears striking resemblance to Mars, from Star Trek: The Original Series - Remastered.

Star Trek was among the first TV series to be filmed in color. M-113 is a desert planet, covered in yellow sand dunes and dark rocky outcrops, with an eerie reddish sky.  M-113 reseambles surprisingly the planet Mars, even if at the time Star Trek was filmed nothing was known of its surface, visited by space probes only in 1976. Mars is today a dry planet with a thin carbon-dioxide atmosphere, but geological evidence suggests a dense atmosphere with a wet past.

Martian sky on September, 11, 2018. NASA/JPL

In 1849 the Italian chemist J. Usiglio performed a set of evaporation experiments with seawater along the French Riviera and established the order in which evaporite minerals precipitate from an aqueous environment. On earth these minerals are mostly gypsum and halite, associated with borates, potassium- and magnesium-salts. Such minerals if found in a stratigraphic column are compelling evidence for the former presence of water.

The Groeden sandstone was deposited in a landscape consisting of a succession of perennial and periodic rivers, alluvial fans, lakes and coastal plains in a semiarid climate (hot and dry with seasonal excessive rainfalls). Pedogenetic horizons with folded gypsum layers record strong evaporation and water level fluctuations. The upper cross-bedded sandstone records periods when meandering fluvial channels alternated with sand dunes of a desert environment.

Already from the orbit the Mars Global Surveyor identified terrains on Mars composed of a stratified material, covering a more rugged and cratered relief. To clarify the origin of these layers a field-investigation was necessary. In 2004 the Opportunity rover landed in the Eagle-Crater, located on the Meridiani-Planum - a flat, uniform plain with few impact craters. Opportunity spotted some outcrops in the small crater, however the exposed stratigraphic column was very short. The rover was therefore directed to the larger Endurance-Crater.

The outer rim of this crater provided an unique outcrop - soon named Burns-Cliff, after Roger Burns, who predicted the mineralogy of the Martian rocks (composed mainly of ultrabasic minerals, like olivine, and iron-sulfate minerals) based on the preliminary results obtained by the Viking missions.

Along the slope of the cliff geologists recognized a succession of rock types, or facies, named informally "Burns-Formation", the only extraterrestrial geologic formation at the time. The Burns-Formation consists almost entirely of sandstone with grains of basalt, oxides, silicates and evaporite minerals (calcium- and magnesium-sulfates, chlorides and phosphates). The Burns-Formation can be subdivided in three members:

- A lower unit of cross-bedded sandstone, probably sand dunes formed on a dry lakebed.

- A middle unit with laminated sandstone, interpreted as ancient sand sheet deposits of sporadic flood events. This units displays also various effects of groundwater infiltration, like dissolution of minerals and precipitation of new ones. Convoluted layers formed probably when minerals expanded due chemical reactions with the groundwater.

- The upper unit consists of laminated sandstone, layers of cross-laminated sandstone are interpretated as subaqueous ripples.

The Burns-Formation at the Burns-Cliff, Endurance crater.

The Burns-Formation records the transition from a dry dune-field to a wet playa environment. Sporadic floods formed ripples and during dry periods minerals precipitated from the evaporating water. In later times Meridiani-Planum was covered for longer periods with water and maybe a shallow lake formed. This transition from dry to wet conditions occurred probably many times in the Martian past, as the dunes of the lower unit are already formed by reworked evaporites from older sediments. Liquid water implies a much dense atmosphere, even if not necessarily with oxygen.

If M-113 has a similar past as Mars, evaporite deposits should be common, including
sodium-chloride. Therefore, the Salt-Vampire should not need to kill to get salt. The still breathable atmosphere may remains of a former, more wet past. Mars lost most of its atmosphere over time, as gravity on such a small planet is too weak to hold on it.

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