Remember that apocalyptic photo of the Statue of Liberty as Hurricane Sandy descended on Manhattan? Nearly swallowed by a massive, menacing cloud, the statuesque lady managed to look both fragile and a symbol of strength as the storm descended. The image turned out to be fake, but the imagination of its creator has not been forgotten. In this vein, artist
Nickolay Lamm with the help of former NASA researcher Marilyn Vogel, illustrated what the Statue of Liberty would look like if it were placed on other planets.
Below we see the iconic landmark on Mercury, whose landscape is similar to the moon. We see her on Venus, which is dotted with erupting volcanoes spewing a yellowish cloud of hot, sulfurous air, that takes over NYC's skyline. On Mars, strong storms would render much of the Big Apple's surface area dusty for months at a time, caked in red. Saturn has such strong atmospheric gases our lady's green patina would likely dissolve, while clouds of ammonia would float freely around her.
And forget about Lady Liberty lasting long on Uranus—the winds there are faster than Earth's most powerful hurricane, and she'd be destroyed immediately. Through his clever illustrations, Lamm reminds us just how precious our Earth is, and how our environment is just right for human life and our fantastic structures. That's not something to be taken lightly, as he explains online, "Our way of life depends on a set of conditions which does not exist anywhere else on our universe. Let's protect what we have."
Earth
Jupiter
Mars
Mercury
Neptune
Saturn
Uranus
Venus
Images via Storagefront.com