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A group of student satellite engineers at Cambridge University has taken issue with the famed tagline of Ridley Scott's 1979 horror masterpiece Alien, and is making a valiant effort to make your screams heard from space. The project is part of a collaboration between the group Cambridge University Space Flight and British space company Surrey Satellite Technology that will test how well a satellite in orbit can be controlled from a smartphone-based guidance system, while also handily frightening off any extraterrestrial invaders who happen be hovering around the planet.

With the release of Ridley Scott's Prometheus -- the semi-prequel to Alien -- just around the corner, promotional videos continue to stream out to keep the anticipation high. The latest is an interesting look into the titular star-chariot Prometheus, revealing a little bit about how the ship fits into the story, its design, and some of its surprises. For instance: It apparently has its own basketball court. See it, after the break.

All it took to create this grotesque statue was quite a bit of artistic skills, a wooden bowling pin, and a healthy dose of Alien lore. The artist, Peter Nordstrom, titled this work Prometheus and the presence of xenomorphs imply that he's as excited about the forthcoming film as we are. See more pictures, after the break.

So far the promotional material for Ridley Scott's forthcoming Alien prequel Prometheus have been stellar. We've had a TED talk from the future, a beautifully shot short film about a creepy cyborg, and other bits and pieces. The trailers have been fragmented, but a new three-minute international trailer fits a lot of those pieces together and shows us more of the film than every before.

What with Easter being a very egg-centric holiday and Ridley Scott's Prometheus coming oh so very soon, the two were destined to collide in this chocolatey parody of the original Alien film. Expect chocolate eggs and chocolate face huggers, and a reprise of a certain breakfast scene. You'll never look at chocolate sauce the same way. See the video, after the break.

When it comes to the forthcoming Ridley Scott sci-fi flick Prometheus, the going line has been that it is not really a prequel to the Alien franchise. Sure, it will take place before the events of the original film in the same universe, and Scott is quoted as saying that the new film would contain "strands of Alien's DNA, so to speak," but it's really not a prequel. The latest trailer, however, seems to suggest otherwise. See it, after the break.

The first rule of merchandising is "make all the things" or at least, it might as well be if Alien chopsticks exists. They do. Ostensibly marketed to rabid fans of the film who want to think about it while eating sushi or other Asian-style foodstuffs, these Alien chopsticks may not be for everyone. Me, for example. They are not for me. That being said, there is something awesome about the fact they exist, despite the fact that I would never want to use them, or even look at them for very long. If you'd like to do the latter, check out some close ups after the jump and then make fun of me for being squeamish.

At this point, there is a pretty established tradition of building intricate, awesome things out of LEGOs, sans instructions. Despite the fact that this is nothing new, this Predator bust by Shawn Snyder might be the most awesomely-detailed, actually-kind-of-scary LEGO bust on record. Not only does it have eyebrows that are slanted angrily and all the appropriate fangs, but you'll also notice that its collection of skulls all appear to belong to different species of animal. Now if I can just find an awesome LEGO recreation of the alien from Alien, complete with inner-mouth, my life will be complete. More pictures after the jump.

The highly anticipated news that Ridley Scott would be returning to his seminal science fiction setting, the Alien series, has evolved, or, perhaps metamorphosed.  Yes, the joyful facehugger of Ridley Scott and H. R. Geiger creating a prequel to Alien about the briefly and mysteriously featured space jockeys has disappeared, only to be replaced by the chestburster of a completely original science fiction project called Prometheus. Painful?  Yes.  Surprising?  Perhaps.  But ultimately a happy occasion of new life being born among bloody screams in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable breakfast.

Good news for those who like their alien spaceships properly oozing, dark, and pseudo-sexual: H.R. Giger is now confirmed as a contributor to Ridley Scott's new Alien prequel.  Giger is the artist who designed all of the alien looks in the original sci-fi horror flick, and so it is he who we can thank for those extraterrestrials known sometimes as xenomorphs, but more commonly called simply, significantly, aliens.

Supposedly captured by a deer stand camera set up in Berwick, Louisiana, a photo of this freaky monster thing has been making the rounds today, even appearing on a short local NBC segment (video posted after the jump). The hunter who discovered the photograph claims it's real, and also claims his camera was broken, but the memory card that contained the photo was left unharmed.

Alien Head Pez Dispenser (Toycutter)

Epic Gauntlet Thrown to Olivia Munn (Bitchmedia)

Mary Jane Will Not Be In The New Spider-Man (Topless Robot)

Rod Blagojevich is Doing What at Wizard World? (Bleeding Cool)

Dylan Meconis Teaches You How To Draw a Tricorner Hat, With Macros (Heroine of the Hour)

Tell Us Stories, Mister Gaiman! :D (Bleeding Cool)

Sexiest Images From Saturn (Wired Science)

(image via Reddit.)

This just in: LOST director Jack Bender is reportedly the frontrunner for helming Moscow, the reboot of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan spy franchise. Chris Pine will be playing the newest Ryan incarnation, starting afresh as a U.S. Marine graduate working under a Russian billionaire, before being embroiled in a terrorist plot. Bender hasn't directed a feature since 1991's Child's Play 3, so it will be interesting to see what results. This comes on the heels of the announcement that LOST co-creator Damon Lindelof is attached to write the Alien prequel. (Vulture)

Damon Lindelof, a.k.a. the less grumpy of the two former executive producers of LOST, has just sealed the deal for his first solo screenwriting contract since the island adventures ended. Lindelof will be taking on rewrite work for a prequel for the Alien franchise, which could use a jolt of popularity. After all, when Joss Whedon was talking about cool props he has at home, he said "an alien egg, but I had to bury the franchise to get it." Well let's hope Lindelof can dig it up and give it some weird alien CPR or something. For those of you worried that Lindelof might just start over and make up the whole prequel as he goes along, leading to an unsatisfactory, overly spiritual ending, never fear! Lindelof has already met with 20th Century Fox and Ridley Scott, who Fox wants to direct the feature, to discuss ideas for the prequel. See? Planning ahead. But, perhaps unfortunately depending on your sentiments toward the franchise, "the exchange of ideas between them sparked a take that could well turn out to be a free-standing science fiction film," according to Deadline.

A picture that the Gemini Observatory took in 2008 has just been officially confirmed as the first direct photograph of a planet outside our solar system. While we have images of other alien planets -- a.k.a. "exoplanets" -- such images have been composed via indirect means of observation, such as gravitational fluctuations, rather than as true photographs. This particular planet is about eight times the mass of Jupiter, and orbits the star 1RSX J160929.1-210524, which is located about 500 light-years away. The unnamed planet is the little orange dot in the upper-left-hand quadrant of the photograph above.