Aliens may have been rating our planet as a travel destination all along! This set of reviews is from Matthieu Barrère’s webcomic Awful Drawings. Link -Thanks, Kim!

Now this is worth getting out of hypersleep for: Austin-based acting troupe Old Murder House Theater has brought back the classic sci-fi movie Aliens and improved it. Behold, Aliens on Ice!

Jacob S. Hall of Movies.com wrote:

Yes, this is real. In fact, it's a natural evolution for Old Murder House Theater, the acting troupe that has made a bit of name for itself adapting unlikely films for the stage. In the past year alone, they've performed Home Alone, Die Hard, Back to the Future and RoboCop (which you can read all about here). There are two reasons why this makes perfect sense:

1. A violent, '80s flick that is in no way designed to be performed live is right in their wheelhouse and-

2. Transforming the second chapter of Ellen Ripley's ongoing war with the Xenomorphs into an icecapade is the kind of loony idea that that can only possibly exist after someone has exploded fireworks inside a crowded bar to simulate RoboCop's iconic gas station explosion while the titular cyborg breaks into a musical interlude describing his existential crisis. Anything else would be a step back after that.

Naturally, the whole "on ice" aspect of the show began as a joke suggestion by a friend…but Sam, the group's founder and director, went out the very next day, found an Austin, TX ice skating rink that was getting ready to close its doors and talked the owners into hosting the show. [...]

"I've never been on ice." Actor Nate Sakulich speaks for most of the troupe. Suddenly, that chill in the air feels appropriate. These guys have fifteen days to learn how to ice skate.

Links: Austin Group Brings "Aliens" to Ice | "Aliens on Ice": The Review

Previously on Neatorama: Live Cardboard Robocop Reenactment

I know I just shared a Flickr set of alternative histories with pop culture icons, but Etsy seller Matthew Buchholz has an equally notable art series featuring artwork of historical events reimagined to incorporate monsters, aliens and robots.

Link Via Laughing Squid

If we are ever contacted by an alien civilization, would they bestow great knowledge on us or destroy us? A new report explores several possible outcomes to human contact with an alien civilization.  What do you think would happen?

The group’s thinking goes like this: From the rate of change of the chemical composition in our atmosphere, the aliens will deduce our rapid expansion and, because of that, possibly view us as a threat, thinking we’ll soon pursue resources on other worlds.

“If [they] doubt that our course can be changed, then they may seek to preemptively destroy our civilization in order to protect other civilizations from us,” the researchers write.

Link

What makes a good alien creature for a video game? It should look cool, have awesome powers or weapons, and provide a worthy adversary for the player. And it helps if they make some kind of sense. Unreality Magazine looks at several species of video game aliens and rates them accordingly. Which one is your favorite? Pictured is a Protoss warrior from Starcraft. Link

This cool lamp gives an eerie glow as the tractor beam from a UFO finds an Earthling to beam up and study. You may have seen this type of alien abduction lamp for sale, in stores or on the internet, but you can make one yourself for about five dollars! The instructions are at Dollar Store Crafts. Link -via Nag on the Lake

Not everyone can be Stephen Speilberg, but some people can aspire to Tommy Wiseau. At least that is what visual effects maker Martin Gamal seems to be aiming for in this video reel that is making the rounds not for its impressive aliens and action scenes, but its comic lack thereof. Maybe he could get a job on the next Birddemic movie?

What’s it like experiencing Martin Gamal’s visual effects showreel for the first time? It’s like watching Transformers, if Michael Bay had a 20 dollar budget and hooks for hands. Better acting, though.

Link

Using Google Mars a viewer thinks he has uncovered a space station or power plant on the surface of the Red Planet. Watching the video at the link a blurred white object comes into view. What do you think the image is?

American armchair astronaut David Martines posted a clip of his trip to the surface of the planet on YouTube. He used the search giant’s maps of the astral body and his video has already clocked up a staggering 58,000 views. David explains how he found the ‘space station’ or possibly ‘power station’ quite by accident at coordinates 71 49’19.73″N 29 33’06.53″W.

Link

A gamer breaks out his handy spare joystick to save the world from an alien invasion of pixels! -via BB Spot

At one point or another we’ve all thought about how exciting or terrifying it might be to actually encounter intelligent alien beings from another world. What would you do if you were the FIRST human to make contact with the aliens? This helpful guide outlines a few simple things to remember when you encounter E.T. (Such as don’t call them E.T.).  Link

Carl Sagan looks at the life forms on some of the billions and billions of planets outside our solar system in this animation by Dan Meth. You may recognize some of them. -via Everlasting Blort

he head of the republic said that the humanoid figures wore yellow spacesuits and gave him a tour of their craft, which he described as a “semi-transparent half-tube”. They had brought him home in the morning, just as his worried driver and two advisers were about to call a citywide search after finding his apartment empty.

“I am often asked which language I used to talk to them. Perhaps it was on a level of the exchange of ideas,” Mr Ilyumzhinov, who is also president of the international chess federation FIDE, told the Vladimir Pozner programme on Russia’s main First Channel.

This is not the first time that he has spoken of the alien encounter but yesterday his claims prompted Andrei Lebedev, an MP from the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, to ask Mr Medvedev to order an official inquiry into the alleged alien agents to establish whether Mr Ilyumzhinov disclosed secret information.

Link via Gizmodo | Photo: Reuters

Such scenes are speculative, but Hawking uses them to lead on to a serious point: that a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

Do you agree with his advice?

Link via Glenn Reynolds | Image: US Department of Health and Human Services

The astronomer’s solitary vigil lasted for a few weeks; he ran out of telescope time with little to report. Nevertheless, his pioneering effort sparked the genesis of a 50-year project known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, now an international research program with a multimillion-dollar budget. It has included renting time on some of the biggest radio telescopes in the world—such as the 1,000-foot dish at Arecibo in Puerto Rico, featured in the James Bond movie “GoldenEye.” [...]

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, once considered a quixotic enterprise at best, has now become part of mainstream science. In the past decade or so, over 400 planets have been found orbiting nearby stars, and astronomers estimate there could be billions of Earth-like planets in the Milky Way alone. Biologists have discovered microbes living in extreme environments on Earth not unlike conditions on Mars, and have detected the molecular building blocks of life in deep space as well as in meteorites. Many scientists now maintain that the universe is teeming with life, and that some planets could harbor intelligent organisms.

Link via Glenn Reynolds | Photo: NASA

Previously on Neatorama:
Earth is Becoming Less Detectable to Extraterrestrials
Searching for Aliens to Cost School System $1 Million

This scarf by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories is embroidered with a message sent using the Arecibo radio telescope into space in 1974 in the hope of contacting extraterrestrial life:

The Arecibo Message, one of the most famous messages transmitted as part of SETI, loosely translated, says: “Hi! We’re intelligent! We’re made of meat! Here’s where we live!”

You can download the embroidery pattern at the link.

Link via Make | Photo: Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

Who the enemy is might just depend on your perspective …

Here’s a clever ad campaign for the Sci Fi TV channel by Agostino Toscana and Luca Lorenzini, illustrated in the style of old paperbacks by Mike Koelsch.

Link – via stefdem

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Jake.

A study from Brown University has revealed that skin tone is associated with gender, with women on average having more green in their complexion, while men appear to be redder.

The group led by Professor Michael J. Tarr analyzed 100 images each of Caucasian males and females, controlled for lighting conditions, with subjects wearing no makeup. These were then processed on Matlab to create sexually ambiguous face images slightly distorted with visual noise that randomly included more red or green pixels.

Non-color blind subjects were then asked to identify the gender of the distorted images over repeated sessions (10 one hour sessions) and then the color content for each was analyzed.

On average the ‘female’ faces appeared greener, while the ‘males’ were redder, however this does not appear to be absolute and the use of color to identify objects is still controversial. Overall, this study demonstrates that observers use color to identify gender when other features are obscured.

Far more disturbing (though sadly not addressed in this paper) is the growing evidence to confirm long-held suspicions of the opposite sex: women are aliens and men are devilish!

Link via Science Daily