5 Nightmare Sci-Fi Stories Playing Out In Our Solar System

5 Something Has Awoken on Mars

In 2018, NASA dropped a lander named InSight on the surface of Mars. Its name stands for “Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport,” which sounds like a ridiculous line they made up just to create that acronym but happens to be an exact description of the mission. Among other phenomena, the lander studied Mars quakes. On Earth, we get quakes due to the planet’s tectonic plates. Mars doesn’t have any tectonic plates, but it experiences quakes anyway, which is a bit worrying. 

Then the lander detected a constant hum coming from the planet. It has something to do with what’s going on in the interior of Mars. Could this mean that Mars is a giant egg and is preparing to hatch? We asked several associates, and they all said yes. Then we asked several scientists, and they all said no, but when we asked them what the real cause is then, they had no firm answer.

Earth has its own hums, which are lower-pitched, but those come from the ocean, and Mars has no oceans. The other obvious explanation is wind, since Mars has no shortage of wind, but NASA has ruled that out as well. If the egg explanation doesn’t pan out, we’re going with a society of Martians that hides slightly underground as they sing their mining songs. 

4 The Comet Mega-Explosion

You’ve heard about the huge impacts when something from space comes crashing down, like that asteroid that hit Earth 66 million years ago. Today, let’s tell you about the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which slammed into Jupiter. It hit with the force of 10 million megatons of TNT. That force been variously called “300 million nuclear bombs” or “5 billion nuclear bombs.” It turns out there’s a wide spectrum in the size of nuclear bombs, but any way you describe it, it hit with the force of a whole lot of nuclear bombs. 

When it hit the planet, it raised the temperature by some 60,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a number so high, we don’t really see the point in also converting it to Celsius. It created a blast more than a thousand miles tall. Hours after the strike, waves were still rippling around the planet at a thousand miles an hour.

But why are we bringing up this one impact, when Earth itself had impacts of its own during its extensive history? It’s because Shoemaker-Levy 9 didn’t hit millions of years ago but in 1994. We were able to watch it happen in real-time. It left a scar on Jupiter 7,500 miles wide, which is basically as wide as the Earth. 

If you’re wondering the chances of Earth getting struck by a comet like that, the answer is: “a hell of a lot less than Jupiter’s chances.” But that should be of small comfort, because you do plan to move to Jupiter eventually, as you’re ambitious.

3 Metal Snow

Or maybe you plan to move to Venus, which is a bit closer and a bit more solid. That sounds like a good plan to us. We sent the first probe to Venus all the way back in 1962, so trips to Venus shouldn’t be so crazy. The first spacecraft to land on the Venusian surface made it there in 1970, just a year after the first humans reached the Moon. Though, we would have to deal with Venus’ high temperatures, which destroyed that spacecraft within its first hour there. 

Despite the high temperatures, it snows on Venus. The snow there isn’t frozen water (again, because of the high temperature). Instead, metals undergo a cycle of vaporizing and condensing, much like water does on Earth. 

At these temperatures of a thousand degrees, galena and bismuthinite turn to gas. Then, at the comparatively cool tips of mountains, this mist condenses into frost. We’d personally still consider those temperatures searing hot, but they’re cool enough for the gaseous metals to become solid again. This will be convenient when we go there because snowmen aren’t very sci-fi at all, but metal automatons are a science-fiction staple. 

2 The Atoms Stripped on the Moon

The search continues for liquid water in the solar system, including on the Moon. But what if we told you that water is being created on the surface of the Moon, constantly?

Solar wind perpetually hits the Moon, at speeds of a million miles an hour. This wind doesn’t consist of air but of hydrogen ions, which are really just protons. The Moon’s magnetic field deflects some of these ions but not many, and when they slam into the Moon’s surface, they react with oxygen in the minerals there and create water. 

Scientists figured this out by collecting grains of soil from the Moon and then coating them with gold. You might not understand the exact logic behind that process, but it reflects just how precious water is, round about three in the morning when you wake up thirsty. 

1 A Dictator Has Staked His Claim

In 1971, scientists discovered a small asteroid, which they named “9491 Thooft,” after Dutch physicist Gerard ’t Hooft. They had no idea the chaos they unleashed, because the man then drafted his own constitution that governs the asteroid, and no one has been able to stop him.

Apostrophes are banned on 9491 Thooft, according to the constitution. That’s because the International Astronomical Union left out the apostrophe in the man’s own name when naming the asteroid, and he has therefore extended this omission to all language. Specifically, keyboards with apostrophe keys are banned. Libraries are to remain open all day and all night (day and night being ambiguous terms on this rock), and all tax forms are to limited to one single page. All weapons are banned. This goes also for law enforcement, who must instead deal with evildoers by attaching ear tags to them, permanently. 

Of course, he just wrote all this out in fun, but we can’t help but notice that the parts of his constitution that aren't jokes are intended as utopian but really aren’t very good ideas at all. He wrote out an article on freedom of religion, which bans people from making fun of religions, which isn’t how freedom of religion works (or should work) in the better parts of Earth. His limits on weapons and tax laws are also pretty bad, when you break down how that stuff really works. 

That matters because while your chances of taking up residence on 9491 Thooft are rather slim, you will indeed end up living under laws created by technocrats who think they know better than everyone else. 

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