T. the Extra-Terrestrial (No. 25), the movies that scored with ticket buyers rank higher overall than the Oscar winners on the AFI list.

FORBES: Box Office Champs Rarely Thank The Academy

Standing 38ft-high and constructed entirely of old-growth Douglas fir, the acoustically perfect dome rises out of the dusty Mojave Desert like a UFO, embodying the extra-terrestrial elements that inspired its construction.

BBC: A desert dome that inspires rock stars and star-gazers

Hardy enough to stomach the discovery of extra-terrestrial quasicrystals we imagine.

ENGADGET: Alt-week 8.11.12: Robo-billies, quasicrystals and radioactive art

The subjects covered are astrobiology and the search for extra-terrestrial life, equine nutrition, digital media, "critical thinking in global challenges", artificial intelligence and philosophy.

BBC: Edinburgh University hails online 'milestone'

The Avengers, which sees a team of Marvel comic-book heroes team up to fight an extra-terrestrial threat, was directed and co-written by Joss Whedon, creator of the TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

BBC: The Avengers passes $1.5bn milestone and is top 2012 film

This was when the iridium layer was formed (many extra-terrestrial rocks are far richer in iridium than those found on Earth, so a large impact that scattered the iridium seemed a reasonable conclusion to draw), and when the dinosaurs disappeared.

ECONOMIST: Some new ideas about why life on Earth has periodic crises

The ideal Ashbery reader is a foreigner or an extra-terrestrial: there can be no more liberating way of learning English than from these wacky, dandified samplings.

ECONOMIST: Modern poetry can be plaintive or richly idiomatic, or both