Showing posts with label E.T. aliens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label E.T. aliens. Show all posts

June 11 - Premiere of E.T.

   Posted on June 11, 2022     


This is an update of my post published on June 11, 2011:



This science fiction film - which premiered in theaters on this date in 1982 - is about a friendly extraterrestrial creature stranded on Earth and the children who help him to re-establish contact (“Phone home!”) with his spaceship so he can go home. This movie was hugely popular, when it was first released; it became the highest-grossing film of all time, over Star Wars (A New Hope) - a record that stood for 11 years, only to be eclipsed by Jurassic Park (the first one!). It was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won four Oscars plus other awards.

This movie was notable to me - at the time when it was released - because it was one of the few that portrayed alien creatures in a positive light. (Another that did, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was created by the same director as E.T., Steven Spielberg.)

How about doing a research project about how aliens are portrayed in movies and books? 

How many authors and screenwriters show aliens as monsters who attack humans and who need to be destroyed? 

How many show aliens as interesting possible friends? 

How many show aliens as powerful, technologically advanced good-guys?

How many show aliens who are super mysterious and impersonal and aloof, or hard to recognize as sentient in the first place?

Here are some movies that could be part of such an analysis:
Warning: some of these are really scary, and some movies may be rated R. But you can check plot summaries on the internet, rather than watching them.

  • Alien movies
  • Star Wars movies
  • War of the Worlds
  • Independence Day
  • Contact
  • Starship Troopers
  • Cocoon
  • Starman
  • Invasion of the Body Snatchers
  • The Day the Earth Stood Still
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: The Year We Make Contact
  • K-Pax
  • Star Trek movies
  • Avatar
  • Battle: Los Angeles
  • The Blob
  • Men in Black movies
  • Guardian of the Galaxy movies
  • Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  • Ender's Game
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December 17 - UFO Project Canceled

Posted on December 17, 2017

Ball lightning
There are loads of things to see in the sky. The moon and sun, airplanes and helicopters, birds and insects, stars and planets, clouds and lightning are all pretty normal...But there are many more unusual things, at times, such as meteorites or "falling stars", weather balloons and drones, noctilucent and mammatus clouds, St. Elmo's Fire and ball lightning, green flash and sun dogs, mirages and other optical illusions.

Noctilucent clouds
Mammatus clouds

St. Elmos' Fire

Green flash

Both normal sky stuff and unusual phenomena can be confusing to viewers. We can become confused with how far away something really is, and therefore how big it is. We can misunderstand lights jiggling from moving air currents, thinking that they are actually lights on moving vehicles. We can mistake a swarm of creatures for a single large object, and we can assume that a bunch of water droplets or reflecting and refracting lights are actually solid objects.

So - the upshot of all this confusion is, some people are sure - maybe even definitely-for-sure - that they've seen a flying saucer, or a UFO (unidentified flying object), or whatever you want to call a spaceship from another planet...when they've really seen something else altogether.

UFO folks ask, what else could these things possibly be?


1. 

2. 

3.

4.

Check out the answers below.

Starting in the 1940s, people began to report flying saucers. And in 1952, the United States military took notice and opened a study called Project Blue Book to figure out if the UFOs were a threat, and to analyze the data about UFOs in a scientific way. The Air Force was in charge of the project, and they studied thousands of reports.

By this date in 1969, the Air Force declared the project closed, with the final report saying that:

* No UFO has ever been reported that indicates a threat to national security.

* No UFO has ever been reported that represents some sort of technology more advanced than our own.

* No UFO has ever been reported that could be categorized as an extraterrestrial vehicle. 

Answers to "What else could these things possibly be?"

1. a lenticular cloud
2. a helium-filled inflatable purchased from eBay
3. an enormous flock of birds
4. a moon of Saturn




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January 16 – Happy Birthday, Jill Tarter


Posted on January 16, 2017

Perhaps you have heard of the great divide between the two kinds of science? There's life science way over here -- you know, biology, botany, zoology, microbiology, physiology, anatomy, medical science. And then, over there are the physical sciences -- physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, meteorology...

 When you're in middle school, it seems as if there is a separation between the two general branches of science.

 But then...

 ...Then you realize that there are ALL these connections.

  • Organic chemistry and biochemistry are about the chemistry that happens in living things. 
  • Astrobiology is about extraterrestrial life (and also the possible future of life on Earth).
  • Biophysics is the study of living things with the focus of how the laws of physics affect them.
  • Ecology and environmental science combine non-living (physical) and living things, including landforms, climate, plants / animals / other living things.
  • Oceanography includes physical aspects of the ocean, such as plate tectonics and waves and tides, with the biology of marine animals and other living things.

Today's famous birthday is a hero of one of these interdisciplinary sciences. Jill Tarter earned a Bachelor of Engineering Physics Degree and a Master's and PhD in Astronomy...but most of her work has dealt with astrobiology.

She worked on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), using radio telescopes to search for intelligent signals from other creatures with technologies. She retired from her career in 2012 but is now on the Starmus Board of Directors. This group puts on an international festival that celebrates astronomy, space exploration, music, art, and other sciences that touch on astronomy (cosmology, astrobiology, etc.). Talk about interdisciplinary!

 Here are some wise words from Tarter:




Enjoy Tarter's TED Talk, "Join the SETI Search."

 Have you ever considered how really very unlikely it is that E.T.s will look almost exactly like us?



Instead, they may look crazy different from us:







  

 Also on this date:





















Plan ahead:

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