Mar 23
The search for a new Earth outside the solar system seems to be nearing its end. NASA’s Ames Research Center astronomer Thomas Barclay has found a planet nearly the size of Earth in the habitable zone of a star in the Milky Way.
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Mar 17
Sideshow Collectibles will release two Xenomorph busts this year. Both the Big Chap and the Alien Warrior will be in “Legendary Scale”, the toy maker’s term for 1:2 scale. Unless we’re talking about a Super Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann scale model, I refuse to call anything that’s half the size of the original “Legendary”. That said, these busts are freakin’ scary.
Come on Sideshow, use a banana. Get with the program. The Big Chap is 14″ high and has its trademark slimy shine, semi-translucent head and French kiss-ready mouths. It also bears a relief of a xenomorph egg and a facehugger at the back of its base. It also comes with a plate that bears the Alien movie title in its stylized font.
The Alien Warrior is not as slimy or imposing as the Big Chap and has its distinctive ridges. Its bust also has an egg and facehugger relief has an Aliens film plate.
Get in the power browser and head to Sideshow Collectibles to pre-order the busts. The Big Chap costs $400 (USD) and will be released this November while the Alien Warrior costs $350 and will be released this July.
[via GeekAlerts]
Mar 11
We’ve actually seen a baby in a Power Loader costume before, but it doesn’t get old. There’s something very creepy and unsettling about seeing a baby in control of a multi-ton machine capable of crushing an Alien Queen like a bug.
This one was built by Carsten Riewe for a Karneval Parade in Germany and it’s a dead ringer for the Caterpillar P5000 exoskeleton power loader from Aliens. But instead of Ripley, his 13-month-old daughter is the one driving this thing. Hopefully she isn’t a temperamental child and won’t destroy the whole town or anything because she didn’t get the toy she wanted. Nah. Don’t worry, her dad is behind her as the real driver.
The costume is a nice piece of work, and took about 100 hours to build. The arms and legs are full moveable and the top-light and LED are powered by a 12 Volt battery pack stored in the backpack. The on/off switch is in the left arm. There is also a Bluetooth boombox in the backpack to play mechanical robot sound effects or music.
Feb 19
It’s human nature to look up at the stars and wonder what’s out there. Becoming an astronaut and going outer space is every kid’s dream. But sometimes it’s more eye opening to explore what’s here. Like in the ocean. Like deep underwater. Like inside alien-looking caves. It’s utterly terrifying.
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Feb 14
Why It's So Hard to Find Alien LIfe
Posted in: Today's Chili
A big reason why the Fermi paradox has punch is the matter of time. Max Tegmark gets into this in his excellent new book Our Mathematical Universe (Knopf, 2014), where he runs through what many thinkers on the subject have noted: Our Sun is young enough that countless stars and the planets that orbit them must have offered homes for life long before we ever appeared. With at least a several billion year head start, wouldn’t intelligent life have had time to spread, and shouldn’t its existence be perfectly obvious by now?
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Feb 10
As America’s foremost ambassador to space, Carl Sagan has continued to inspire our fascination with exploring beyond Earth. The Library of Congress has digitized its Carl Sagan archives, and several items just collected online give us an amazing new look into the mind of the astronomer.
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Jan 09
In almost every sci-fi movie worth re-watching, it seems that us humans are always less technologically advanced, dumber and only serve as a mere speed bump into an alien race eliminating humans to take over our planet and suck Earth dry of its resources. We’re always the weaker ones in alien wars. Well, what if we’re not? Tom Scott imagined a scenario where everyone else in the universe was afraid of humans. It’s fantastic.
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Dec 31
Say hi to the Portuguese man o’ war. It’s purple, it’s clear, it looks like a balloon, it’s painfully venomous, but it’s not a jellyfish and you wouldn’t have to convince me too hard that it’s from an alien world. This Portuguese man o’ war, which other than being a fantastic name, washed up on a beach to freak people out (and to expose the alien hideout that is the ocean).
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Dec 26
Quick, what’s the first thing you noticed about the planet we visited in last night’s Doctor Who special? That’s right: It was a soundstage.* None of Matt Smith’s final hour was filmed in a real location. Alien worlds used to be filmed in the studio more often — here’s why we miss visiting Planet Soundstage.
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Dec 09
The possibility that Mars was once home to all kinds of life is looking better and better with each new Curiosity discovery. According to newly published research, the rover has stumbled across a site in the Gale Crater that scientists believe might have once been a lake full of life.
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