Why is the lake black?

yea it wouldn't be out of place to have the lake infected after david has had several years on his own experimenting. if I was him, id contaminate the water supply first, best way to infect a large number at the same time plus david wont be affected by it.

Michelle: Nice. Where is it?

@Chli. It is in the heart of Fiordland close to Sutherland Falls and the bigger of the two lakes, which are effectively Tarns, is called Lake Quill.

I make no assertion about whether it is contrived for the film as a Black Goo Lake I just found it fascinating when I looked up my photos that it looks much the same. Personally it does not strike me as Ridleys style, whereas the other still I have seen the David ignition scene with the window onto the flight path of the tear drop ship does mean something.     

Looks wonderful. Now you have been in Paradise, Michelle. :)

I think its great Michelle has been to the place as she can gauge how much work Wayne Haagg and people he works with have put into the actual filmed footage to change the colors, lighting and visual tone of the elements.

I think the Polish Prometheus did to its locations was very good, and it would be interesting to see from a perspective of someone who has seen the locations up close and personal how well the team for AC has done to make it look a bit different.

Well, the trailer is showing some key scenes but in that case the colour of the water has no consequences for the plot, I guess.

It simply shows the similarity to earth based planets the engineers and weyland explorer teams are looking for.

I have always though that it was a result of where the sun was located.

Well there are a  lot of Parameters that make a world Earth like and even if we found some very Earth like ones they may still not be suitable.

The Goldie Locks Zone i think is what you Thoughts_Dreams are referring to were a World would have to be a certain distance from the Sun, but this distance does not have to be the same as Earths to our Sun... if the Sun is not as powerful then it would have to be closer, if the Sun was more powerful it would have to be a bit further out.

This would insure a World fits within the right Temperature and has enough Sunlight to support complex Life.

Then other Prime things a World would need is.

*Atmosphere

*Water

*Good Level of Oxygen compared to other harmful Gases.

But even then these are things people would over look below and what would really narrow down finding a Paradise like World.

*Number of Moons, Size and Distance

*Rotation and Orbit of the World

*Number of Planets in the System and their sizes and distance relative to the World that is scouted for habitabliity

These all effect the Gravitational Pull on any world, if Earth had a Larger or Smaller Moon, Two Moons, if Earth rotated 3X faster or 3X slower and if there was more larger planets like Saturn/Jupiter or closer or even if there was no Large Planets like this or they was vastly further away.

Then this would impact the Earth and effect Seismic Activity, Volcanic Activity, Water Levels and Storms.  And then also the chances of the World getting hit by large impact events.

So there is a whole lot of things that have to be JUST right.

Which even if we can break Speed of Light Barriers to travel far, would still be a limited amount that are just right for us.

But this dont rule these Worlds from having any life, i am sure we would over hundreds of years find many worlds with Life, but sadly i am not sure about many that we could land on and just live on like we do on Earth.