Percival Lowell's Canals of Mars

In ancient times, a light in the sky was named after Mars, the Roman god of war. The red planet's two moons, Phobos and Diemos are both named for deities representing fear and terror. According to the horoscope, the sign of Mars rules not only our aggressive and primitive instincts, but also our risk-taking and physical challenges. Indeed, a scientific expedition to Mars does involve taking risks and meeting incredible challenges, but each successful mission to the red planet helps to satisfy our primitive urges to expand our territory and our knowledge.

The Canals of Mars

Mars has always been a place of mystery, and that mystery has deepened every time we learn more about our second closest planetary neighbor. Although the orbit of Venus is closer to Earth's orbit than that of Mars, Mars has held more appeal for both the public and scientists alike, perhaps largely because of an apparent optical illusion. In 1877, an Italian astronomer named Giovanni Schiaparelli, peered through the telescope at the Brera Observatory in Milan and saw what appeared to be lines drawn across the surface of Mars. In his native Italian he called them canali, which means channels. In one of those delightful coincidences that shape history, canali sounds very much like the English word canal, as in man-made canals filled with water.

Percival Lowell Popularizes Martian Canals

The idea of watery canals on Mars, more than anything else, has helped the red planet capture our imagination ever since the American Astronomer Percival Lowell declared that these channels were actually artificial canals linking vast oases of lush vegetative growth. While this theory had been advanced earlier, it had also been long discarded as unsupported by any evidence. Undaunted, Lowell peered at the murky details of the surface of Mars and saw an engineering feat unmatched by humans to this day, a planet-wide system of artificial canals sustaining life across the red sands of the Martian desert. He not only saw it, he preached it. Lowell wrote books on the subject and convinced many Americans that it was so, despite the continually mounting evidence against his assertions of living water filled canals on Mars. Percival Lowell sold the world on the idea that Martians might exist.

Lowell's Canals Inspire Bradbury's Martian Chronicles

It was almost certainly Lowell's insistence that there was a civilization on Mars that inspired Edgar Rice Burroughs to write about John Carter's adventures on Mars, or Barsoom as he told us the natives called it. Burroughs' fictional accounts of Martian civilizations and the adventures to be found on the red planet fueled the fire that Percival Lowell had created, but it also fueled two other notable fires. The fire of inspiration that Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom books lit in a boy named Ray Bradbury led him to create his own fantastic worlds and characters. Bradbury even recreated a dying Martian civilization, complete with ancient canals, in his Martian Chronicles.

Young Carl Sagan Dreams of Canals on Mars

The other person who credited Edgar Rice Burroughs with setting his career path is Carl Sagan. Sagan made real contributions to science. Rather than creating romantic illusions about Mars and outer space, Carl Sagan told us compelling tales about the real thing. He made real science interesting to the public at large in a way that really hasn't been done since he passed away. Carl Sagan told us about the Billions and Billions of stars in our galaxy and explained the natural wonders of the Cosmos in terms we could all understand. He made us excited about NASA's missions and our country's role in the exploration of space, and made us all dream of becoming astronauts.

Martian Canals are Illusory, but Water on Mars Is Real

The mystery of canals on Mars, it turned out, was just an optical illusion. Giovanni Schiaparelli's canali and Percival Lowell's canals never existed. The interplay of shadows on crater rims across the Martian plain gave the appearance of straight lines to primitive telescopes, but as we developed better lenses and gained higher resolution, the lines that made Lowell believe in life-giving canals on Mars dried up like so much Martian dust. Ironically, though, water, in the form of ice, has been found on Mars by NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.

The Search for Life on Mars

The discovery of water ice on Mars has again fueled speculation of life on the mysterious red planet. Mars is a real candidate for becoming the first place that we discover true extraterrestrial life. Instead of a thriving Martian culture that's busy building canals, however, any life we find on Mars is going to be microbial in nature, if we do indeed find any at all. Mars is not the best hope for extraterrestrial life in the solar system; it just happens to be the closest and easiest to reach candidate. The large moons of Saturn and Jupiter have the highest probabilities of harboring life, but it'll be decades before we can get to them and start looking for it.

Sources used in "The Canals of Mars, the Origins of our Fascination with the Mysterious Red Planet"

nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html

www.thefreedictionary.com/deimos

www.thefreedictionary.com/Phobos

www.tarzan.org/barsoom.html

www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/527306/Giovanni-Virginio-Schiaparelli

www.astrologycom.com/mars.html

nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html

www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/349831/Percival-Lowell