Anatomy of a Creeper

Minecraft is known for many things. Unbridled creativity. Wasted time. YouTube videos. Aaaaand these guys:

"ssssssssss..."

It's not every day a programming mistake turns into a franchise mascot, but when a programmer accidentally mismatched the height and length of a pig, the Creeper was born.

They're best known for hissing and exploding, wrecking your stuff and ruining your day. Obviously video game logic at work, but could there be another explanation?

That's not quite what I had in mind, but A+ for effort.

Why does the creeper explode? Maybe it's not on purpose, maybe a real-world creeper would explode by accident because of a buildup of methane? Maybe creepers build up flatulence but are bad about...releasing gas?

In Minecraft, it's possible to kill a creeper without setting it off. And guess what they drop? Gunpowder.

Gunpowder, in its most basic composition, consists of three chemical components: nitrate (supplying oxygen), carbon (supplying fuel), and sulfur (lowering the ignition temperature while also supplying fuel). So while I don't know what the ins and outs of the production process might be (and to be honest I don't want to think about then too deeply), it's not impossible to imagine a scenario where a creature produces a buildup of organic gunpowder in its own body.

But why would evolution select such a creature with a disposition for self-destruction. Well, in Minecraft, it's possible to breed passive "mobs" like cows, pigs, and chickens, but good luck breeding hostile mobs. So we really know nothing about their "society." Maybe they're secretly a hive-based species? Bees die after using their stingers, but because they do so to protect their hives, it's a factor in favor of species survival, not against. And Telltale's Minecraft: Story Mode does see them attacking in groups. Plus, you could also consider the fact that Creative Mode lets you spawn creepers from eggs:

Presumably laid by a Yoshi.

True, you can spawn any mob from eggs, but it's all we have to go on. Still, it all makes a kind of sense. A creature that is hatched from an egg in an underground hive, explores the environment while camouflaged to look like foliage, and explodes if its hive is threatened. That definitely sounds like a creature out of a pulp serial. If any Minecraft modders are reading this, I'd like to see a new mod where the player can stumble across an underground creeper hive, and if they're strong or clever enough, fight and slay the Queen Creeper. I'd play that game.

(Edit: Turns out Game Theory addressed the same topic in a lot more depth. His conclusions differ from mine, but I still think it's a great video, definitely worth a look.)

Naming The Most Interesting Exoplanets in the Galaxy - Part 1

So the first wave of official IAU names for extrasolar planets went really well, but it ignored a lot of the really cool planets. I can understand why this was done, instead focusing on planets with enough evidence of their existence to be declared "confirmed", but it seems to me that it's the interesting ones that merit naming the most.

With that in mind, the following are some of my proposals for names for discovered exoplanets, based on the few details we know about them. At some point I hope I can make a poster of them or something. Keep in mind that I'm not necessarily advocating these names be made official by the IAU just yet; our understanding of these planets is constantly evolving, and most of what we "know" about them is really conjecture. But my last piece was about figuring out whether Starkiller Base was terraformed; our main priority here is speculating and having fun with scientific rigor a close second at best.

Easter

Image source: NASA

Designation: WASP-12b
Constellation: Auriga
Distance from Earth: 871 ly
With one of the tightest orbital paths known, orbiting its sun in just 26 hours(!), tidal forces stretch this planet into an egg shape. Hence the name.
You know, because...Easter eggs.

Plutus

Image Source: NASA

Designation: PSR J1719-1438 b

Constellation: Serpens

Distance from Earth: 4000 ly

A pulsar planet that is believed to be composed of solid diamond. Thus, I think it should be named for the Greek god of wealth (from which we get the word "plutocracy.")

Diadem

Source.

Designation: J1407b

Constellation: Centaurus

Distance from Earth: 116 ly

Remember that Super Saturn discovered last year? The term "diadem" basically means "crown," so I think that fits this planet's most prominent feature.

Yasur Source.

Designation: Corot-7b

Constellation: Monoceros

Distance from Earth: 490 ly
This is a planet that could have extreme volcanic activity or even seas of lava, so I named it after Mount Yasur, a volcano in Vanuatu.

Mustafa

Source: David Aguilar, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Designation: Kepler-36b

Constellation: Cygnus

Distance from Earth: 1530 ly
OK, I admit I picked this name as a reference to Mustafar from Star Wars Episode III. But when I first saw the above artist's concept, I was reminded of this shot from the movie:

"That's no moon." No really, it's not a moon, it's a planet.

Volcanic planet backdropped by purple gas giant? Too on the nose to pass up. This is only reinforced by the supplemental material which confirms that Mustafar is not a moon of that gas giant, but stuck in a tug of war between two gas giants, tidal forces producing extreme volcanic activity. With the Kepler-36 system, there seems to be only one gas planet involved in this gravitational tug of war, but that's still close enough for me.
Not sure what to name the other planet though. "Mustafa" is a common Arabic given name and an epithet for the prophet Muhammad (meaning "the chosen one"), so maybe we can complement that by giving Kepler-36c a feminine name of similar significance: Khadija, the name of Muhammad's first wife. I think this works because it paints this solar system in a more positive light, seeing the volcanism not as a state of destruction but as a thing of natural beauty in the universe.