What would Manhattan's iconic skyline look like if NYC were suddenly beamed to another planet? Seven fantastical illustrations by Pittsburgh-based artist Nickolay Lamm suggest it would look, well, pretty different -- and not necessarily in the ways you might imagine.
The illustrations, put together with help from ex-NASA astrobiologist Dr. M. Browning Vogel, show what the Big Apple might look like on each of the other planets in our solar system.
"The idea came after seeing images of Mars' Mount Sharp," Lamm told The Huffington Post in an email. "I felt that if I could show people what New York City looked like on other planets, I'd give people a sense of how lucky we are to be living on Earth."
Lamm produced this project for StorageFront.com, and drew the illustrations in Photoshop, making sure they were an accurate representation of Vogel's descriptions.
And it's incredibly eye-opening to see just how different our planet is from nearby worlds -- especially gas giants Neptune and Uranus, which have high winds. Check out Lamm's images in the slideshow below.
Mercury
Mercury has but a thin envelope of gas that barely qualifies as an atmosphere. The inexorable solar wind continually strips the planet of any gases that might be captured or retained by gravity. The tenuous atmosphere consists primarily of hydrogen making the atmosphere transparent to the darkness of space and the withering radiance of the nearby Sun. The solar wind interacts with the planet?s magnetic field to blast columns of dust and charged particles up into the atmosphere that then become a comet-like tail, evident as the sparkling haze shown in the upper atmosphere. The landscape is perforated with impact craters and covered in volcanic dust, similar to Earth's moon.
Venus
Due to its prolific volcanic activity, Venus is blanketed in an atmosphere of CO2 with clouds of sulfuric acid. This creates a yellowish envelope of hot, sulfurous air that obscures the NYC skyline and the nearby sun. The landscape is devoid of water and covered by craters, lava, sulfurous dust and other features created by Venus' volcanoes.
Earth
This is the original image of New York City that was used as the inspiration behind this slideshow.
Mars
Mars has an exceedingly thin and cold atmosphere composed primarily of CO2. Mars? atmosphere has an oxidizing chemistry that converts the abundant iron materials on its surface into various forms of rust, evident as the tawny landscape. Strong convective currents in the atmosphere also stir up frequent dust storms that can cover vast expanses of the planet and last for months. The NYC skyline is thus caked in dust and framed in Mars' dusty red atmosphere.
Jupiter
Jupiter is the largest of the outer gas giant planets. Its atmosphere is so large and thick that the hydrogen and helium gas components condense into liquid and even metallic form near the base of the atmosphere. At around 100 km height above this liquid surface, the air has a similar air pressure to Earth?s atmosphere at the surface, but has a reducing chemistry that would burnish any metal surface, including that of the Statue of Liberty. The NYC skyline is depicted at this 100 km level, floating in the atmosphere.
Saturn
Saturn has a similar atmosphere to that of Jupiter, containing a mixture of hydrogen and helium that condense at the base of the atmosphere. NYC is shown at about 100 km above this liquid surface, where the clear hydrogen resides at similar pressures to Earth?s atmosphere and contains soft cream colored clouds of ammonia ice with occasional thunderstorms (shown below the cloud deck). As with Jupiter, the atmospheric gases are highly reducing and would slowly dissolve any metal oxide surface like the green patina that covers the Statue of Liberty. White clouds of ammonia and light hydrocarbons float by above the skyline.
Uranus
Uranus is a cold gas giant that rotates perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. It has very high wind speeds at certain latitudes due to the uneven heating of its surface. These winds are faster than the most powerful hurricane on Earth and would thus obliterate structures like the Statue of Liberty. The atmosphere is primarily composed of hydrogen and helium with occasional clouds of methane and bands of hydrocarbon haze, shown as the horse tail clouds above the skyline. The atmosphere also contains a considerable fraction of methane, giving the air a beautiful aquamarine tint.
Neptune
Neptune is the outermost planet of the solar system and thus the darkest. Like the other gas giants it experiences extreme winds that would destroy buildings and other structures. Neptune's atmosphere consists primarily of hydrogen and helium with traces of ammonia and water giving it an azure tint. Ammonium and water ice condensate hangs as light colored cirro-stratus clouds above the skyline. Neptune?s atmosphere is the coldest place in the solar system.
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/13/nyc-space-nickolay-lamm-illustrations-big-apple-planets_n_3255404.html
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