Plot summary: Aliens land on Earth via artificial lightning, extract their long-buried killing machines from under the ground and start blasting people to bits. The world's armies prove useless against the alien technologies. Then one day, thankfully, the aliens simply drop dead from drinking our water.
Science review: The visual effects of this 2005 film are impressive, but what's really stunning is the way that H. G. Wells' basic plot, from 1898, still seems like a (cough) plausible scenario for an alien invasion. In particular, I'm quite willing to believe that accidental biowarfare would far out-gun our pitiful technologies. The same thing happened in human history, after all, with soldiers in trenches dropping dead from infections rather than bullets.
Bacteria are certainly a hot issue in the field of astrobiology. Researchers have looked at the possibility of alien bacteria surviving a ride to Earth on an asteroid, have worried about humans accidentally seeding other worlds, such as Mars, with our own bacteria, and have widely discussed what bacteria would look like elsewhere and how we can best detect them. Sadly, the Journal of Astrobiology has nothing to say about the likelihood that Earthly bacteria would or could kill off visiting aliens. One might assume, however, that if aliens are smart enough to make it to our planet, they too might have thought about the problems of pathogens in advance, and guarded against it.
Award: Most realistic death of an alien.
Image: courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment. Available to buy on DVD. |
