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.

Project Blue Book

Between 1952 and 1970 the US Air Force investigated over 12,000 reported sightings of UFOs. The program was code-named Project Blue Book. A new drama series on the History Channel is based loosely on the history and case-files of Project Blue Book. Loosely, because the cases are embellished with some dramatic details and also the idea of government cover-up and conspiracy is pushed.

In the first episode “The Fuller Dogfight”, Dr. Allen Hynek is recruited by the Air Force into their top-secret UFO investigation program, to investigate the case of a military pilot who survived a dogfight with an alien craft.

The astronomer Dr. A. Hynek was a consultant for Project Sign, a UFO investigation group established by the Air Force after the UFO phenomena became popular in 1947. In 1948 the project was replaced by Project Grudge and Hynek was not called back to consult. After a wave of UFOs sightings in 1952, the Air Force replaced Grudge with Project Blue Book and once again enlisted Hynek as a consultant. In 1953 it was concluded that UFOs did not pose a threat to the United States and Project Blue Book was closed in 1969. Hynek continued his work as UFO investigator, and published a series of books on the subject. Even if controversial in some aspects, he never labelled himself as true believer or just debunker, he is considered one of the fathers of modern ufology.

The title and pilot are based on the case of George Gorman, a 25 years old WWII veteran. On the night of October 1, 1948, on a cross-country flight with a P-51 Mustang, the sky appeared to be clear, when Gorman noticed a blinking light with no obvious form over his plane. For 20 minute he tried to catch the ball of light, but apparently, the UFO outmaneuvered him with higher speed. 

George Gorman's depictions of his UFO encounter, from the Project Blue Book archive.

Curiously also a Geiger-counter on board detected a high rate of radioactive radiation. The object was spotted also by other planes. However, the true facts of the case are less unexplained. The other pilots didn’t note any movements of the object, as reported by Gorman. The measured radioactivity can be explained by natural radiation, stronger in the upper atmospheric layers. No physical evidence or damage on the plane was ever found. As for the UFO, later investigations discovered that a weather balloon was released that night, and the wind at the time should have brought it right around where Gorman had his encounter. As Gorman was the only who allegedly noted the object/balloon move, it is likely that this was an optical effect, as he had no frame of reference in the empty sky. As he approached the object, it seemed to quickly vanish as the plane was maneuvering.

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.

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.