The science behind the terrifying Xenomorphs of Alien: Covenant

All throughout human history are numerous examples of things that just seem to go so well together: toast and butter, pen and paper, Rachel McAdams and movies with time travel, and so on. And then we have the Xenomorphs from the “Alien” film franchise, which demonstrate how combining two otherwise enthralling things — outer space and sex — can take a turn for the downright horrifying.

Putting the 'D' in 'Design'

While other filmmakers were busy blowing things up in dystopian futures or going where no man has gone before, Ridley Scott redefined the science fiction horror genre by taking our ever-growing fascination with space and giving it spikes and a tail. ‘Alien’ burst out of theaters in 1979, spawning a line of movies and merchandise revolving around what was basically an extraterrestrial metaphor for the male genitalia.

That’s right — if you’ve ever sat through one of the ‘Alien’ movies and noticed that the titular horrors seemed, er, phallic in appearance, you weren’t just seeing things. The Xenomorphs’ disturbingly disgusting design was largely based on a 1976 painting, ‘Necronom IV’, created by Swiss surrealist painter H. R. Giger. Giger, who specialized in creating thematically cold and mechanical works of art, came up with the Xenomorphs’ iconic look, which has since dwelled in the nightmares of horror fans, science fiction enthusiasts, and people named Ripley.

Killer science

In Alien, the Xenomorph was described as “the perfect organism,” a hostile, pure species built to survive and “unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality” — a fancy way of saying that it can and will kill anything that moves.

These slimy, parasitic horrors share quite a few similarities with insects. Like cockroaches and centipedes, Xenomorphs very similar to arthropods with segmented bodies, jointed appendages, and a protective exoskeleton.

Xenomorphs are also eusocial creatures: similar to ants, bees, or wasps, they follow a colony structure, protecting a central Queen to ensure the longevity of their species.

The Xenomorph’s shiny, elongated carapace raises another important question: Exactly how can these dexterous predators see? There are a handful of in-universe explanations for this, from the carapace functioning as a one-way mirror that obscures their eyes, to the use of pheromones (like many insects) and echolocation (like bats and dolphins) to supplement an underdeveloped sense of sight.

Oh, and Xenomorph blood is also highly acidic, allowing the silicon-based creature to not only survive, but to also to grow without nutrition.  Theoretically, the acidic blood could function as a battery of sorts, creating a bioelectric charge that energizes the Xenomorph and eliminates the need to breathe or eat.

This also gives this fictional species one of the most elaborate and effective ways to flip anything that successfully murders it a posthumous middle finger.

(Literally) unspeakable horror

The animal kingdom is full of creatively sadistic examples of parasites that completely destroy their hosts’ lives, from a fungus that turns ants into zombies  to hairworms that make grasshoppers jump to their deaths. By far, though, absolutely nothing matches the sheer destructive horror of Xenomorph reproduction.

The process starts when the Queen’s eggs begin to hatch. The larval form of the Xenomorph (called a Facehugger, which is both deceptively non-threatening and hilariously accurate) emerges, and immediately begins to look for its victim. Once it finds a host organism (which, in the ‘Alien’ movies, typically ends up being an unlucky human), it impregnates the victim through the mouth via a tube-like proboscis with an embryo called, ominously enough, a Chestburster.

After it has fulfilled its mission, the Facehugger dies, leaving the host with the sinking realization that he or she only has several hours left to live. After a short period of time, the embryo lives up to its name, tearing its way out of the host’s chest cavity to quickly evolve into a full-grown Xenomorph. The Xenomorph takes on the characteristics of its parent, which explains why most of the ones we see in the ‘Alien’ films exhibit traits such as standing upright on two legs.

If this whole process — the forced entry of a phallic object down a victim’s throat — sounds uncomfortably like rape, that’s because it was intended to. As once explained by Dan O’Bannon, the screenwriter for ‘Alien’, the Xenomorph life cycle is more of a representation of “cross-species homosexual oral rape” than of human pregnancy.

Add that to the fact that a full-grown Xenomorph’s weapon of choice is its set of phallic, pharyngeal jaws (stored INSIDE its eyeless, elongated head and mouth — will these horrors never cease?), and one can easily see why the ‘Alien’ franchise probably has Sigmund Freud rolling in his grave.

This combination of grotesque imagery and violence is basically what puts the ‘Alien’ franchise squarely in the “sci-fi horror” genre.

We experience fear — a mental chain reaction that causes the release of chemicals designed to help an individual survive immediate danger — when we are subjected to stimuli that sends neural impulses to the amygdala and triggers the fight-or-flight response from the hypothalamus. And, well, nothing triggers this response quite like the sight of an eyeless, bipedal Matroyshka doll of phallic murder-mouths.

But does it all add up?

Fear not, though. For the ‘Alien’ films to become a terrifying reality, they’d have to beat both the laws of nature AND some pretty complex mathematics, too.

It would take incredibly specific conditions to be able to breed a silicon-based species that not only exhibits insect-like characteristics and sociality, but can also instantly adapt to DNA from any kind of host from anywhere in the cosmos, grow rapidly with little nourishment, AND have highly corrosive blood. The unique physiology of the fictional Xenomorph species makes it close to impossible for them to be real — at least, as far as what we know about science is concerned.

Also, if we were to abide by the Drake Equation  — which was designed to estimate the chances that we would find intelligent life in space — we would also have to factor in a ton of statistics, such as the rate of star formation, the fraction of those stars with planets, the average number of said planets that can support life, the resulting fraction of those planets that ACTUALLY develop life, and so on.

Take all of these into consideration, and you would have a reasonable argument as to why we’re probably never going to encounter anything that even looks as terrifying as a Xenomorph — and a reason to sleep peacefully at night...

...Oh wait, not so fast.

Pleasant dreams! — TJD, GMA News

Alien: Covenant debuted in Philippine cinemas starting May 10, and is rated R-13 by the MTRCB.