E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSAn android named David (Michael Fassbender) steals the show in "Prometheus." Watch the trailer.
If we ever come across traces of an advanced alien civilization like the one featured in "Prometheus," the new semi-prequel to the "Alien" movie series, our first course of action should not be to send them a shipload of human meat. Instead, send in the robots.
At least that's the prescription from Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the California-based SETI Institute. "Would you indeed load up a starship with alien fodder and send it out?" he asked me. "Of course you wouldn't, because we don't know how to do that."
Sure, the crew of the starship Prometheus starts out in the year 2089, when we can assume that fusion power has solved our energy woes. But there's no chance that we'd be able to mount an interstellar trip by then, unless Spock and his pals from the planet Vulcan beam down and show us how. Even assuming that an ion-powered starship like the Prometheus could somehow get to other stars in a realistic (and relativistic) time frame, Shostak said he wouldn't send the humans on the first expedition to LV-223, the scene of the action in "Prometheus."
"I think what you'd probably do is load up a spacecraft with sensors of all types, radio receivers, cameras, spectrometers, anything you can take up, essentially make it a Mars Viking mission, and just have it radio back what it finds," he said. "That's a heck of a lot less dangerous, and beyond that, it's a lot easier, because you don't have to put all this life support stuff and these cantankerous hominids on the rocket."
Even better, you could have that spaceship peopled by androids like David (played by Michael Fassbender in the movie), who basically steals the show in "Prometheus" anyway. That way, you avoid the ickiness of having monsters incubate inside human wetware, as they did in the original "Alien."
"If you can design an android that can do all the things that they do in these films, why is it that they haven't gone one step further and just replaced us with the androids?" Shostak asked. "Machinery can evolve much more quickly than biology. It's funny that they all get stunted at just the level where they're mostly helpful and occasionally malevolent."
In this promotional video for their new, eighth generation of artificial life, Weyland Industries displays many of the features of "David," as featured in the movie "Prometheus."
Of course, without all that human cantankerousness and ickiness, you don't have much of a space horror movie. And be assured, there's plenty of both in "Prometheus." There's also a little real-life science in the movie, thanks in part to Kevin Hand, deputy chief scientist for solar system exploration at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Hand served as a consultant on the film, and one of the first things he learned is that you should never let scientific qualms get in the way of a good movie.
"Being a scientist working with filmmakers, you have to keep in mind that the story comes first," Hand told me. "The science is a way to motivate certain elements and provide aspects of the plot. As long as you go in with that understanding, as a scientist, you can let your guard down a bit and not be constrained — which is different from our normal day-to-day scientific metabolism."
With that in mind, here are five themes in the movie that include a twist of scientific realism:
Habitability: Early into his involvement, Hand gave film director Ridley Scott and his team a tutorial on the different environments in our own solar system, ranging from steaming-hot Venus to cold, dry Mars and ice-covered Europa and Enceladus. The setting for the movie, LV-223, is a moon that orbits a giant planet in its parent star's habitable zone. That's similar to the fictional moon in the movie "Avatar," which orbits a Jupiter-like world named Polyphemus. It might also be similar to the theoretical moons circling 55 Cancri f, a planet detected about 41 light-years from Earth.
Hand noted that LV-223 is habitable in the Earthlike sense, meaning that it has an atmosphere and could conceivably support life at the surface. But he thinks that most livable environments are less like Earth and more like Europa, a Jovian moon that is thought to have a miles-deep ocean of water hidden beneath its forbidding surface ice. "Much of the habitable real estate in the universe might be within these ocean worlds that are covered with ice," Hand said. By his reckoning, Earth would be the peculiar planet.
Panspermia: I hope I'm not giving anything away when I say that "Prometheus" touches on the theme of panspermia — the idea that the building blocks of life, if not life itself, can be transferred from one planet to another. It's a great sci-fi theme, but it's not necessarily science fiction. Some theorists have proposed that life could have gotten its start on Mars, which was warmer and wetter billions of years ago, and then hitchhiked its way to Earth on the debris thrown up from a meteor blast. Or life could have come to Earth from farther out in the cosmos, borne by an impacting comet.
Hand pointed out that NASA's Kepler mission has detected thousands of potential planets in just one little patch of sky. That leaves plenty of opportunities for finding life out there, and plenty of opportunities for life to make its way here.
"Here we are on Earth, a planet in a solar system around a star that is 4.6 billion years old, which seems like an incredibly long period of time to us," Hand said. "But the universe is 13.7 billion years old. So there was a lot of time before the solar system even came about, 8 billion years or so of the history of the universe, during which many forms of life, many advanced civilizations, could have come and gone. They could still be there now, or they could have died off billions of years ago."
Propulsion: The Prometheus starship uses an ion propulsion system that gives a nod to the real-life ion drives used by probes such as the Dawn spacecraft, which is currently in orbit around the asteroid Vesta, Hand said. "The spacecraft that they're using is a much more advanced version of that kind of propulsion, but it's got a link to our current mode of exploring the solar system," he said.
It's unlikely that ion propulsion will be able to provide the power and maneuverability that Prometheus has anytime soon, and certainly not by 2089. But ion drives could offer a good option for interplanetary or interstellar flight. Their hallmark is slow but steady acceleration, starting out with as much force as it takes to hold up a piece of paper. Unlike chemical rocket engines, ion propulsion drives keep going, and going, and going, building up a figurative head of steam. Some experts suggest that nuclear or solar electric ion propulsion will provide the oomph for eventual missions to Mars.
Mapping: In the film trailer, there's a scene where the away team tosses out a few flying robotic spheres that scan the underground caverns with lasers and send back mapping data. Hand said he couldn't take total credit for that idea, but the robo-balls are based on the same principle that Stone Aerospace is using to design real-life submersible robots capable of observing and mapping subglacial lakes in Antarctica or, perhaps eventually, on Europa. "I mentioned some of that work to the artistic team," Hand recalled. There's just one big difference: The real-world robot, known as the Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer, or DEPTHX, will be "going through underwater environments on Earth as opposed to exploring alien spaceships," Hand said.
Terraforming: At one point in the movie, Prometheus' away team finds out that they can take off their helmets and breathe the air inside an underground cavern. Hand was asked to come up with a plausible explanation for that plot point, and he proposed that an alien civilization could easily come up with a nuclear-powered device that electrolyzes water to produce oxygen. Heck, even we puny humans are thinking of ways to use rock-eating microbes to make Mars more livable. It won't happen overnight ... but maybe it could happen by 2089, if we play our cards right.
"Prometheus" focuses on an expedition to go after to the aliens, but what if the aliens were of a mind to come after us? Should we lie low, as famed physicist Stephen Hawking has suggested? Unfortunately, it's too late for that, Shostak said.
"For any society that could come here to do nasty things to us ... it's very easy to show that they could pick up all the stuff we've been sending out since the Second World War. In fact, they could pick up the lights of New York City," he said. "In a sense, we've already told the aliens we're here. The idea that it might be dangerous if we found some planet over there, so don't send them anything ... it's too late. That's not to say it might or might not be dangerous. We have no idea. But it's too late. It's silly to worry about it, because it would require that you lay low not just for the weekend, but forever. Forever! That would so cramp the sorts of things that our descendants could do, that I don't think that policy would have legs."
And if the aliens really do come after us? If they have the capability to project their firepower over a distance of light-years, forget what you saw in the movie "Battleship." We're toast.
More about the search for alien civilizations:
- Expert doubts alien visitors would terrorize us
- Queen of SETI retires from research
- City lights could point to E.T.
- What if E.T. thinks we're evil?
- What would you ask E.T.?
- Cosmic Log archive on aliens
More Hollywood reality checks:
- Reality check on 'Hunger Games' tech
- Invisibility and other 'Harry Potter' technologies
- 'John Carter' and the real-life Martian quest
- Virtual actor takes over in 'Tron: Legacy'
- Apollo 18 in fiction and fact
- 'Avatar' and the future of 3-D moviemaking
- Reality check for 'Star Trek' tech
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Well, if we ever learn about how the thousands of alien spacecraft that have been observed are engineered we may be able to do some really amazing stuff.... oh yeah - you already ruled that. Thanks for having an open mind .... LOL
“Keeping an Open Mind is a Virtue, but not so Open that Your Brains Fall Out.”
– James Oberg, space journalist and historian
"If you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of rubbish into it."
- William Orton
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
- Carl Sagan
"Show me."
- State of Missouri slogan
Demonstrate that what has been observed are 'thousands of alien spacecraft' first, before I start worrying much about how they might be propelled, and what physics they use.
A closed mind is like a closed book; just a block of wood.
The closed mind, if closed long enough, can be opened by nothing short of dynamite.
You are going to believe whatever you want to believe - whether it is true or not.
When you talk about proof or a demonstration - for many that is still subjective.
I would be open though, to see someone try to prove that "alien spacecrafts" do not exist.
Out of the thousands of things mankind should worry about this is number 3500.
Willie, I could just as well been asked how Santa's reindeer fly. (And I did believe that once, but taken entirely on faith) Now you must show me that that exists as well, before I consider the means.
The onus of proof is on the claimant.
How are they going to give Mars a Magnetosphere ?
Without that, people will live extremely short lives there.
We would not be here without Earths magnetosphere.
you people act so down beat and think that aliens will take over the world well that is not happening, we will put up a fight and hopefully emerge victorious.
Anyone with the technology to cross interstellar space to get here, by definition (as we can't even begin to do such things ourselves) will be seriously more advanced technologically than we are.
We can only hope they will be benign, because if their intent is not to 'take over the world,' we could do little to block whatever their intentions actually are, if they were uninterested in what we thought of them...
Sorry commenter, but in the real world, the good guys often lose.
Should some alien civilization ever endeavor to attack us, it is most likely they would do so on account of considering the human race to be a threat.
They would not even need to reveal themselves (to us). They could merely alter the orbit of some suitably sized asteroid such that it impacted Earth. We would be none the wiser and, if not exterminated, sent back to the stone age for many millennia.
Ian, that is exactly why the dinosaurs died. An alien civilization deemed them a threat and chucked a big rock at them.
All jokes aside, you are correct.
Anyone with the technology to cross interstellar space could go elsewhere. Us worrying about aliens taking over the Earth is probably not that different from a bunch of meerkats in the Kalahari worried that humans will steal their burrow. We live in a big universe.
Enslaving us isn't likely, either. If you assume that humans would make the ideal slaves, then they would just steal a bit of human germplasm and grow their own slaves.
The only reason we would be eliminated was if we had so much potential that we could be viewed as a serious threat. But given that we haven't been so far, maybe we are far more retarded than we like to think.
Any alien invasion would likely follow the example of what Europeans did to the Americans. People with advanced technology landed here and brought disease, war and enslavement to the stoneage people that lived here.
How many Humans of all the Humans on Earth are intensively interested in Ant colonies? Now compare our significance as a whole planet to an Ant colony. Now ask yourself, am I really interested in Humans? I think another life form would be aware of our existence, but I don't believe they would much care about interaction with us. Just an interesting thought.
"How many Humans of all the Humans on Earth are intensively interested in Ant colonies?"
Enough, if it's your colony they check out..
If you're drawing an analogy with ETs, it only takes one, with the means to do so, not the entire population.
Yes, the tea party will save us from an alien invasion. Thank God for the 2nd amendment!
It's been done as a movie plot. Remember "The Day The Earth Stood Still"?
Dawn V.......
That is (still) a great movie. It proves that, when profound ideas are explored, depictions (movies) can be classic despite the relatively primitive cinematography employed.
The suggestion that Jesus Christ could have been an alien (or, a human / alien hybrid) is particularly interesting. In fact, that idea was so provocative, it gave MPAA reason to insert dialog to weaken that premise.
The MPAA inserted dialog into what exactly?
" How to serve Man", IT"S A COOKBOOK!!!! Twilight Zone
Dawn V Your correct. That movie was dead on with the vast difference in technologies we would encounter.
Sending in the robots before sending in humans would be disastrous. The advanced alien life would undoubtedly capture some of robots, learn how the computer systems work and create very nasty viruses to further affect our defensive systems which would operate on the same principles of the robots computer programming. Not only would sending in robots first open our defenses up completey the aliens would also reverse engineer them to use against us by first making them appear to be functioning normally but when it came time for the aliens strategy to unfound the robots would turn on us killing hundreds of millions of humans in a single instant.
Sending in robots first would not be key. Sending in humans would be the key however as the humans would not be able to be turned so easily and would fight to death against the aliens to defend humanity.
Lets just hope Seth or any of his relatives are not on the Senate Intelligence Committee during such an invasion.
What are they going to pickup a copy of Visual Studio to make the modifications? Really?
You first.
Dwight,
Well, I disagree. Robot probes and possible android like constructs would be the way to go. That's the way technology is taking us right now. We've got drones fighting our wars for us now and more military constructs like our aerial drones will the be wave of the future. Followed of course by "walkers", that is military men in huge mechanical fighting suits supported by actual ground troops the way Panzer Grenadiers supported the German tanks in WWII. That's a must, at least for the time-being.
"Peaceful Probes" would be the way we'd visit any alien world to be followed by human explorers if the conditions are right.
I do find these discussions fascinating and am dying to see "Prometheus". The Alien quadrilogy being one of my favorite sci-fi series. Glad to see the Weyland Corp. is still out there exploiting the resources of space!
Just because you can reverse-engineer a system doesn't mean that you can necessarily hack into it from the outside. It all depends on whether the engineers have overlooked something or not. It is not reasonable to assume that computer science will not have progressed to the point where virus defense was still in an infant stage.
They could always Photoshop themselves and overwhelm us in duplicates.
"Sending in robots first would not be key. Sending in humans would be the key however as the humans would not be able to be turned so easily and would fight to death against the aliens to defend humanity."
Right. Humans could not possibly be brainwashed or otherwise influenced, their biology analyzed and infected with engineered real viruses to spread back to others, etc...
Actually, if the Aliens are themselves AIs, they might consider the robots the only truly interesting entities...
I was a bit disappointed with Avitar ....
And Star Trek has kind of been played out ....
Lost In Space was always good , but old school now ....
"Prometheus" looks like it might be a must see , by having plenty of content and special effects ....
Star Wars was a huge success ....
If the cosmos has many inhabited planets with alien life forms on them ....
I hope we are the ones that have the most fun and entertainment ....
The Earth is definitely worth travelling light years across space to come see and enjoy ....
Thanks Alan Boyle for this article ....
You should join us at Star Trek dot com where we engage in very interesting conversations about life existing across the Universe we call Genesia....or at least the name that I gave it.
Watching the movies is one thing. Engaging in a thought provoking discussion with other like minded people is however very stimulating and productive.
I for one would be in favor of sending humans first. Where is the human glory in saying that a robot that looked like a human was the first to set foot on an alien planet? That would make the robot the sovereign deity instead of a human being the inspiration to lead the charge.
I doubt if the ancient gods and goddesse meant for a human look alike to be the first to set foot on an alien planet. Otherwise they would have left behind plans to make humans into robots now wouldn't have they?
The trailer does tell me that the movie promises to be thought provoking as well as entertaining.
I for one have waited my entire life to read about the backstory relating to the Space Jockey that I saw when I watched Alien for the first time.
The entire movie was awesome but at the end of it and every Alien movie thereafter my thoughts about the Space Jockey always kept me asking the question. How did he get there? Where did he come from? And is Earth going to be their next target?
If anyone has read about ancient empires such as the Greek Empire their is a part in Alexander where Philip is teaching his son Alexander about the Myths of Greece.
In one part Philip explains to Alexander that after the war between the Olympians and Titans Zeus struck down the Titans and combined their ashes with humans.
Alexander asked Philip why. Philip did have an answer and said that they were only myths and would be long forgotten.
Perhaps the myth below can explain the reasoning behind why Zeus mixed the ashes of the Titans with humans.
Zeus and the Gray of the Earth
After the war between the Titans and Olympians Zeus struck the Titans down with his thunderbolts into ash. Zeus then took then ashes of the Titans and mixed then with the blood of humans. Why asked Alexander of his father Philip. Philip did not have any answer other than myth.
Perhaps that reason that Zeus mixed the ashes of the Titans with the humans was a simple gossip that if humans did not remember the gods and goddesses that a great famine would strike those humans who did not look up. Not to worship. Why do gods and goddesses need to be worshipped for they are immortal. Not as punishment. Why would gods goddesses punish humans to make them look down at the ground in shame only to never gaze upon them again?
The reason that Zeus mixed the Titans with human blood was simple. To give all humanity the strength to look up and remember the gods and goddesses strengths of courage, loyalty and purity of the heart. That if any human should look to the ground in shame because of another then the human theirself would not be shamed but the gods and goddesses theirself. A shame that would anger the gods and goddesses at making humans look to the ground and not up.
But why would the gods and goddesses want humans to look up. Another simple answer. Looking up into the darkness, into the fear of the Universe sets humans apart from each other. Those that look up and challenge the fears of the unknown with the gods and goddesses of the ancient world on their side will not know fear but only the strength and courage to brave the unknowns with the gods and goddesses at their side.
The Earth has been conquered by Alexander the Great on all continents. Not for the superiority of one race over the other but so that all races would be brought together in trade and the mixing of cultural knowledge and to mix humanity humanity together in an unbreakable weave of fabric and thought.
But where do we go now? Do we as humans merely sit idly on our knowledge and entertain ourselves with the fattening of the cows before each feast listening to monkey chattle about the fear of the unknown? No we will challenge that unknown as a human race together. Those that continue their chattle will none the less be left to their monkey habits while the rest of humanity travels into the night and the unknowns of the Universe to explore and conquer those alien species in space before us. Because Alexander is in all of us regardless of color his courage and spirit of heart is there with us all.
But more importantly one of Alexander’s great generals, Crateros will be there to remind everyone one thing as our expeditions leave Earth and venture into the night. Humanity will hear his words as we encounter new planets both barren and lively, that the same as the craters are theirself wide and deep just like Crateros’ words before Alexander and the river across which they crossed into the unknown territory. There will be no bellyaching in what humanity must do in order to survive the goal of Death. That goal is too keep humanity bottled up like the genie to only sleep in a small world never knowing the beauty of the Universe by setting foot on a foreign planet. Death’s goal is to keep her, Creation from reaching humanity so that Creation will never be known so that through Creation she that created us in an inferno of fire and blood will lose part of her soul when Death comes and takes humanities soul from the field of the Universe, from the field of battle we call Genesia.
Death is at the door step of humanity every day and in ever poem that is made and every song that is sung making humans circle around them like vultures looking for a new meal but even the vultures are repulsed by the stale meat that they thrust their beaks into.
Humanity has long died trying to conquer each other so that all humanity will remain together unbroken. But Death has a way of making even the strongest of fabric like spiders silk before its knife. The only way for Death to be beaten so that Death does not take our souls and make of them into jars of plainness upon the shelves that line Deaths chambers is to make a new home in the Universe around our great Earth. We do not have any choice as we sit here on Earth making idle gestures of politics that mean nothing and do not have any benefit of only living in the glory of the moment. A moment that only lasts for a breath and is then gone into the chambers of Death.
Humanity must reach farther into the unknown through the exploration of space and the colonization of the Moon so that Creation herself will be set free in the hearts of men, women and children so that hope will lift their heads and see the brightest future humanity has ever seen since Alexander first set out to unify the world. Crateros will be there for all of eternity his words deep and provoking yet cold and hollowed like the craters on every moon, on every planet on every asteroid and comet that beckons us to push forward.
So many have died but for what? To sit idly by to be entertained by cakes and tea and while Death pushes closer on humanity and Earth with every day. Those who have died in Alexander’s goal of unifying the world want to know that their sacrifices meant something that their deaths were not in vain for a single kingdom to survive and but to unit a planet in the greatest campaign that the Earth has ever known. That campaign is to colonize known space and unknown space that surrounds the Earth. For as far as the eye can see across the sea of tomorrow humanity will build its empire anew in the great halls of space and time itself so that Earth will great among the stars and planets of Genesia and not simply a goat herder planet.
“Beware the sweet taste of Death’s Queen who will lick your ears with her deceit and lining her loins with the Furies and tales of humanity destruction if they travel past the river that at the end of the world.”
“Should we be silenced by the night and the unknown because we fear what the unknown world might hold for us? That harpies may find us in the night and steal our breath? Should we fear these small things in creating a greater empire for Earth than even Alexander could have built? Would Alexander, Philip, Hellen and all those that brought the world together have sat by and let the Deaths wind keep humanity down or would they have led humanity into the unknowns of the Universe around Earth for the greater glory of humanity. The dreamers exhaust us with their dreams only so that we will tire and fall in slumber protected from Death and his Queen so that we will awake the next day full of life and inspiration. Great men, women and children follow their visions, great visions of setting out across the unknown in great ships with their sails unfurled to the winds of humanities voice filling their sails. A planet is just a planet until human feet place their mark upon their foreign soil, carrying the soul of humanity to each new foreign planet so that the planet will have life and Death and his Queen be chased away.
Loved "Aliens."
Teh alienz iz already hir! !!!
Err, I mean, I would think any civilization that has survived their own planet's turmoil to the point they can travel interstellar distances are probably aware of the fragility of the civilizations they might discover and are past the old idea of let's beat these people down and take their stuff, and more along the lines of respect and reverence.
I mean because if you're traveling around space like that, resources are probably not a major concern for you since you are obviously doing well in the energy management area. So the only reason left to conquer another world is for the ego trip. And when your ego is that big, you don't want to be tied down to a single planet, I mean that's why you left Earth, right?
And conquering and being mean in general is a nasty business and you draw the ire of your own people who will most likely want to stop you and will eventually put an end to your "fun".
So the real fun would be in being able to brag about your knowledge of many planets and the civilizations on them; experiencing their cultures and the whole adventure in living in another world. Of course a lengthy lifespan helps in this endeavor.
I think our fears of what might be "out there" are really just our own imagination. Them guys don't need or want to wipe us out. The Universe would be a much less interesting place when you go forth to wipe out peoples.
And then there are the microbes.
Seth Shostak is a homo, and anything coming out of Nazi NASA is going to be a lie. Werner Von Braun was a Nazi SS Major, and he and a couple of other Nazi homos started Nazi NASA. They are going to lie, lie, lie, and anyone stupid enough to listen to anything they have to say is a fool.
When I was a kid, my dad, who was a military dude, used to take me to these secret University like places where they performed experiments on me. It all seemed very "alien", but it wasn't. It was all corporations. The whole alien abduction thing is private corporations.
That's why the US government protects corporations, and why the president makes a couple hundred grand a year while a first line supervisor at a corporation like Bechtel makes a couple million a year, and CEOs for these corporations make tens of millions of ready hard cash a year. Am I the only one who sees that?
Our government is fake, stupid, and has no power. The power is in the corporations. All that said, any alien being from another star system who came here like an astronaut and studied us would see how retarded we are and would just get out of his UFO and piss, then have a @!$%#e, and get the F out of here. Humans are stupid and anyone who believes this alien abduction/invasion stuff is a retard.
Study all the big alien abduction researchers and hidden in their nonsense you will see its all corporations experimenting on us illegally to make better junk for us to buy and be happy. Milabs is especially a private corporation scam. Betty and Barney Hill reported their abduction to be Nazis, as do all coherent alien abduction victims. The Grays are gay and like to stick things up our butts. That sounds like Freemasonry to me, not aliens from another star system. Tie in secret society homo behavior with private corporation a-holes, and the whole aliens from another star system thing goes away.
dg,
I sincerely hope you are getting help. You obviously need it. "Homo"? Really? Seriously? How 1950's.
Oh, I get it, you mean "Homo Sapiens" of course. Yep, we're all "Homo's" in that sense I guess.
Now take your medication and leave the discussion to the rest of us Homo's.
Yes.
Re. dgarciains
I call Poe, and quite a contrived Poe at that.
First line supervisors making millions. Would be nice, but just one of the everything else you clearly made up.
No intelligent life here....moving on!
hopefully they came here to trash all these viscious bloodsucking crooked govts , lol and no need to pay taxes , , but i do believe theyre here for a more malevolent purpose besides we are after all made in theyre form through millenia we havent evolved yet and soon they will have to intervene , cus somethign bad is going to go down, two forces at work here ,. different beings , and theyre goinng to battle on our turf we call planet earth , lol
Well, there is lots here. I can see why a space faring culture would want earth. It's a jewel. Something that shouldn't be but is. Humanity is a footnote to any intelligence that has spanned a good part of the galaxy. Maybe nothing more than a curiousity. Something "they" have seen before time and time again. But then again who or what is "they". If thousands or millions of galactic cultures exist, then "they" don't really know each other. We are all truly separated in time and space. A big galactic f'k a roo ! Oh and if you want to know the future of androids like BassFender, read The FUTURE OF PHYSICS by michio kaku (Japanese for Michael I believe)
If the aliens ever do call, maybe we should reverse the charges.
why robot's...why not clone's?...stem cell reseach can go a long way in space .
The 3D version is very good, but oddly enough the movie was easily forgettable I found. Next day it was hardly a thought.