Happy Samhain

As I checked twitter today I saw a greeting, "Happy Samhain". I never heard of Samhain before, but it sounded so familiar. A quick look at wikipedia and i found out that Samhain is a Gaelic harvest festival held on October 31. The Modern Irish word Samhain is derived from the Old Irish samain, samuin. And hstorically, Samain or Samuin was the name of the feis or festival at the beginning of winter observed in medieval Ireland.

It only took a minute and suddenly I remembered a planet called Samhuinn in Exodyssey--an awesome book I had for several years now. I quickly grabbed the big hardbound book and opened to the last chapter. And sure enough, the local creatures on the planet, called Samhuinians, had some inspiration from halloween. As a matter of fact, several pages were devoted to what the artists called "Halloweenian Creatures". I feasted my eyes on the biological artworks and wondered about the diversity of alien lifeforms on other planets.

Monsters and Exoplanets

The other day, I chanced upon some illustrations of monsters from the 16th Century via Ulisse Aldrovandi’s History of Monsters (Monstrorum historia). I noticed that these "monsters" were often a mix of land, air, and sea creatures (hybrids), and that the monster characteristics are attuned to the properties of planet earth, of course. But the point is this: As residents of earthworld, humanity has only known the usual land, air and sea environments as we evolved consciousness. And as such, these characteristic environments reflected in the kinds of creatures and monsters that our primal minds conjured from our imagination.

Now, what if the human psyche gets imbued with knowledge of new worlds? And what if we've come to learn of new types of planets, not just the usual terrestrial mix of land and sea that we’ve come to know of?

How will knowledge of new worlds create new mythical creatures from mankind's deepest imagination? Will a new mythos emerge from a new form of exoplanetary consciousness? Do we need to occupy a new planet in order to actually create new myths and legends specific to that planet?

I'm on the lookout for new archetypes of "monsters" that must come out from this era of exoplanets. Sure, it's all just aliens, aliens, aliens. I'm sick and tired of aliens. But although i'm a big fan of Science fiction, I realize that something new should come out from a new level of consciousness brought about by the fact that our planet Earth is just one among an infinite variety of worlds. Can our new generation of imaginative writers create new mythic creatures a la the Lovecraftian Cthulhu or The Great Race of Yith but with a unique exoplanetary twist?

What types of monsters will the modern man come up aside from the cliche of invading aliens, alien-human hybrids, disguised aliens, superhero aliens, artificially-intelligent aliens, and so on? Or are these alien-monster archetypes prevalent in popular culture the final set of otherworldly monsters that our minds can ever come up with? Are they all we can ever have?

Let me know if you have some leads regarding this inquiry. You can reply to me via twitter, or simply comment on this post.

Links:

History of Monsters

District 9: Prawns from a Planet with Seven Moons

The young little prawn is endearing. The scene where he was curiously studying about his home planet is my favorite. Learning that they come from an exoplanet with se7en moons make me a happy camper, too. I would love to hang out with that cute little prawn and learn more about their planet which I speculate is earth-like in many respects. The temperature, atmosphere, terrain and gravity of their home world must be quite similar to Earth's, otherwise the prawns would not survive here if their planetary characteristics were any different.
District 9 is like a comic book, more enjoyable when viewed as such. Many loopholes in the plot are over-ruled by great cinematography. I'm only nagged by a single question of why the humans treated the aliens unintelligently. One would have naturally dealt with these prawns in a civilized way, as one would treat any visitor. Nevertheless, the movie gives homage to the directing prowess of Neill Blomkamp.
The movie will prove to be a great discussion for Xenosociology, the study of Alien Cultures and their social behaviours. It gets steamy when they interact with Humans in a complex setting (apartheid) where the dark elements of the human psyche is displayed. The aliens themselves are reduced to high-tech scavenger bugs.
It makes one think whether an Advanced Technological Civilization would make a race "civilized" at all. However, the drama that ensues manages to reveal the virtues common to both species.
District 9 is a neat little package that gives the freedom to draw one's own metaphors from. It is a great Sci-Fi movie that will reverberate in our culture for quite a while.

The Future of Exoplanetology

They say the best way to predict the future is to invent it. Here is how the future will be invented as seen from the lens of Exoplanetology. The list below can be treated as a roadmap for those involved. It can also be considered as a hopeful glimpse of what is to come.

1) Deluge of Exoplanets - between 60 to 80 new exoplanets within 2009 will be discovered. Last year's forecast of 60+ new exoplanets for 2008 came true. Yet again, there is no reason why this year's planet-hunt won't be as exciting as last year.
2) New Eyes - The development of new generation telescopes (both space-based and land-based) will continue from this year onwards to bring unprecedented new discoveries. See this list of telescopes to see astronomy's new arsenal, which includes Kepler, Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF), James Webb Telescope, Spitzer Telescope, New Worlds Mission, and Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). Although direct imaging technique will continue to make waves in the news, transit method will continue to pile up new exoplanet discoveries. The power of a new set of eyes will set the stage for amazing things that is to come.
3) New Brains - data gathered by some new generation telescopes will gradually be opened up for public consumption starting in 2010 or 2011. Number-crunchers, algorithms and software will sift through terabytes and petabytes of collected data to discover new planets by way of numbers, statistics, and computation. Candidates for "habitables", exoplanets that lie inside the habitable zone (HZ), will be filtered from massive amounts of data, helping telescopes identify good interesting targets.
More powerful but cheaper computers, with dual core or multiple core set up in parallel, will enable more detailed simulations of planet-formations and alien solar systems, providing better insights for exoplanet science.
4) Amateur Boom - Amateur exoplanetology will explode. Projects similar to Systemic, SETI@home (or their mashup) will enable amateurs to contribute to science. Crowdsourcing, baby! Or call it Amateursourcing!
Cheaper and more powerful telescopes, and affordable CCDs for differential photometry will enable amateur astronomers to discover new exoplanets, a la do-it-yourself (DIY) exoplanet-hunting. This will take off, possibly going mainstream in amateur astronomy sometime in 2010 or 2011 onwards.
5) Signs of life - More signs of life beginning in 2010-ish. More organic clues detected in atmosphere of exoplanets. Strong evidence will continue to mount, pointing to the ever-growing possibility of extra-terrestrial life.
6) Superdupers - More Super-Earth detections will become more common starting in 2011 or 2014. "Habitables" or "Habs" will pour in. Water-worlds will flood the news.
7) Exotics - Exomoon detection capability takes off in 2012 to 2014. New exotic discoveries will also start to pour in. Classifying celestial objects becomes even more challenging for astronomers. Imagine earth-sized exomoons with their own moons! What will you call them? Exomoonoids?
8) Earth Galore - More and more Habs and earth-like planets in habitable zones between 2015 to 2020 will pour in. Advances in technology and planet-hunting methods will enable us to resolve exoplanets the size of earth and smaller. There will then be more than a thousand total exoplanets in the list. Direct-imaging methods will be in greater demand as ever.
9) Shockwave - Mankind will be thrown in a theological and religious turmoil. A period of adjustments in worldviews will occur as mankind tries to make sense of their being amidst the impending discovery of another earth with life.
Spiritual individuals have no problems with it whatsoever. But Religions will start to revise old beliefs and begin re-interpreting scriptures to prepare for the ramifications of the discovery of...
10) Life - Scientific confirmation of exo-life happens between 2020 to 2030-ish. Astrobiologists will finally confirm that life exists on another planet of another star. It may not be in an earth-like exoplanet at all, perhaps not even in a planet, and may not even be life-like. It is something so incredible that no one has ever predicted.

An Exoplanet, its Moon, and Gas Clouds

This is what hapens when I look too much at exoplanet paintings. Having recently purchased two books that feature the illustrations of Lynette Cook--one of which is Infinite Worlds--I was then inspired to let my imagination run wild, and mess around with Photoshop. What came up was this picture of a terrestrial exoplanet and it's moon with a glowing interstellar cloud in the background.
Both the exoplanet and it's moon is inhabited by alien civilizations. However, the lifeforms on each of them started almost simultaneously, evolved independently and in parallel. Therefore, their ecosystems differ significantly.
The difference in color between the exoplanet and its moon are caused by the distinct chemicals in their atmospheres that are caused by life's unique metabolisms.
The glow in the background is caused by cosmic rays bombarding a giant interstellar gas which cause it to become energetic.
It might be possible that life on both rocks were jump-started and sustained by the energy from the gas cloud.
Basking in an unlikely source of energy, life in this alien planetary system would be so much different than life on earth.
Different. But not impossible.

The Universe: Alien Planets (Documentary)

The Universe: Alien Planets

Alien Planets

A documentary about the search for exoplanets.

Not OK to Believe in Aliens...

I just came across this funny news headline: The Vatican says it's OK to believe in Aliens.
Of course its not OK to believe in aliens. Are you kidding?
'OK' is an understatement.
Think of what would have happened to someone who believed in the existence of other beings in another planet just like the earth, during Giordano Bruno's time.
The Roman Catholic Church has matured much since those kind of days. Let's hope the growth of reason continues to flourish.

Links:
The Vatican says it's OK to believe in Aliens
IO9: It's OK...

Exoplanetology and The Encyclopedia of Life

Life is what we make it, they say, so they made an Encyclopedia of it! The Encyclopedia of Life (eol.org) was launched today.
It's inspiring, and yet saddening at the same time. It mentioned that some species might never make it there because of mass extinction, a result of the destruction to Mother Earth.
Also, in connection to Exoplanetology.com and this blog which I launched just a few days earlier, it gives me a "de-energizing" feeling whenever I am reminded of the thought:
"We haven't even fully catalogued all life on our own Planet, so why would we want to look for life on alien worlds ?"
Just by thinking of the variety of life on Earth, i already feel overwhelmed. Double that by the magnitude of the endeavor to find new exoplanets and life in them.
But despite it all, the Encyclopedia of Life still inspires me more.
It is a great start! Look, they named it as Encyclopedia of Life, hence it does not exclude life on other planets or exoplanets! So i am imagining the day when a new category will appear on its pages: Exoplanetary Life - Flora and Fauna from other Worlds!
It's a vision worth pursuing, therefore, onwards we must go with the science of exoplanets! Go exoplanetology!

Source: EOL.org goes online
Link: Encyclopedia of Life (eol.org)