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Recently I've been creating a race of parasitic Aliens that eat entire Solar systems. So basically, the alien queen arrive's on a planet or moon that exists inside of a solar system. Then the queen burrows into the planets surface by eating through. She then creates her nest underground and begins to give birth to the workers and soldiers. The workers begin to dig a system of tunnels while the Soldiers scout the surface for life. The queen will then burrow down to the planets core and begin to carve out a cavern for its eggs. It will proceed to lay three eggs, then it will die. The soldiers and workers will also die. After less than a year, the three eggs will hatch queens. They will then eat the body of their mother and the rest off the planet. After this happens they will then spread out towards the rest of the planets and moons in the solar system.

The aliens are completely Organic, and primitive. The only things they know are eat and kill.

How would they get to these other planets?

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    $\begingroup$ Are spaceships not a valid answer? $\endgroup$
    – Frostfyre
    Mar 2, 2017 at 17:19
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    $\begingroup$ Uhm ... burrows to the planet's core? Really? Since these things are already invulnerable/god-like, have them simply fart their way into orbit, and slowly drift through space to their target. $\endgroup$
    – AndreiROM
    Mar 2, 2017 at 17:39
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    $\begingroup$ You're not describing a parasite species, you're describing a predator. $\endgroup$
    – Werrf
    Mar 2, 2017 at 17:50
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    $\begingroup$ "They will then eat ... the rest off the planet." If they eat all the planet it would seem like they would be In space in the orbit the planet previously occupied, so nothing special required to reach space, but then moving themselves becomes tricky as it would seem they would be quite large after eating that much! $\endgroup$
    – Josh King
    Mar 2, 2017 at 18:21
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    $\begingroup$ If your queen (and workers and soldiers) eat the entire planet, their mass equals that of the planet. Gravity will form them back into a planet (although resemblance with the original celestial body might vary) $\endgroup$
    – Burki
    Mar 3, 2017 at 14:49

3 Answers 3

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There is no science or hard-science tag on this question, so I will answer it in a sci-fantasy style.

Imagine that beyond our current observation of the universe and therefore beyond out current understanding of physics, there exists a type of matter which is fundamentally hostile to normal matter. That when this stuff comes into contact with normal matter it converts the normal matter to energy, explosively. Imagine also, that this stuff is not destroyed by contact with matter, so the explosions just spread it out where it contacts and converts more normal matter into more explosions.

Now imagine that your aliens are made of another unknown type of matter which is almost identical to normal matter, but doesn't explode when it contacts the first stuff. Imagine that your alien queen secretes the first stuff as the final stage of its egg laying process. (and that the eggs are very, very tough).

Alien Queen egg arrives, hatches and then her drones eat the planet's surface life. This gives her time to gestate her queen eggs in safety. I agree with @Garnovski, that she should lay a lot more eggs; maybe billions of them, using the planet's mass as her food/building material.

She then secretes the stuff and the planet starts exploding around her. A nuclear explosion with a reaction mass equal to the planet. Eggs go flying in all directions! She probably dies in the process but her eggs now have a way to reach the other planets in the solar system.

Handling interstellar distances is automatic from there. Eventually, following the explosion of one or more of the available planets, some of the stuff will fall into the solar system's primary star. The resulting super nova spreads the eggs out into the great void to plague the rest of the universe.

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  • $\begingroup$ The question requires imagination. You did it proud. You're absolutely right about egg numbers.Parasites propagate by producing vast numbers of eggs. Billions would be needed to propagate across astronomical distances. Plus one. $\endgroup$
    – a4android
    Mar 3, 2017 at 1:19
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Two Options. Maybe three, if you can somehow combine the two.

1) The Queen Eats Everything: the entire planet is gone after she is finished. She is left in space.

  • She has all the minerals of the consumed planet/moon in her digestive system. She 'simply' allows certain chemicals to interact, 'aims', and allows the escaping force of the reaction to propel her in a new direction. She essentially farts (or burbs) her way across the galaxy.
    • If she has eaten the entire planet/moon she will be very very 'big'. she can then use these consumed resources to sustain her in her journey through space. She becomes 'thinner' and 'thinner' as time goes on. If she has expended all resources before reaching a new planet/moon, she will continue to glide passively in the direction she was last orientated to.

2) The Queen Eats Nearly Everything: all biological material and maybe some rocks and minerals. She is left on a tunnel riddled planet/moon.

  • If the planet has a molten core, her workers could excavate a tunnel system designed to create a massive volcanic explosion at a time of the Queen's choosing. She is then propelled through the atmosphere (either on a rock or just by herself), into space and passively glides in the same direction until she happens to come across another planetary body.

  • If the planet/moon does not have a molten core, her workers could excavate a tunnel system to force a structural collapse after a certain amount of time (if that's even possible). The planet/moon breaks up into large and small asteroids. The Queen then is transported on a remnant of the planet/moon she has just eaten, that goes flying off into space due to gravitational orbital mechanics. She essentially hitchs a ride on an asteroid she has just created.

I prefer option one!

Note: None of these options require the predator-parasite to be more than a primitive organism. Most of it's basic chemistry and orbital mechanics.

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Could they fly or jump off the planet gravity by themselves? If so, once in space, they could just drift until they (hopefully) land somewhere. Of course, that would make for very, very slow going, with very low chances to land on a planet, and even if so, the travel speed would be amazingly slow. They would need to survive in amazingly harsh conditions, with no oxygen, though. Perhaps that could work for you.

Some way to improve the process would be: - Lay more eggs, if the number three isn't too relevant to the plot - Steer in space to get better speed and better aiming. The only way to do so in space would be to release matter in the opposite direction, so they would need to expel some kind of substance and lose mass in the process. - If your setup includes space travel, they could steer as said previously, but then latch on spacecrafts and go waaaay faster with increased precision. They would soon be hunted by space travelers though, since carrying one would mean the destruction of the planet you'll be landing on. - Again if the setup includes space travel, some evil person/society could simply use them and move them to planets they want destroyed.

Those are all the possibilites I can think of right now, hope that helped! Good luck!

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