10 Things You Should Know About Life On Mars
From time immemorial Mars has exerted a fascination on people of all races. This is reflected in the many names, familiar to all who read sci-fi/terraforming novels including Al-Qahira (the Arabs), Huo Hsing (the Chinese), Mangala (the Indians), Nirgal (the Babylonians), Kasei ( the Japanese), Ares (the Greeks) or our own word Mars which comes from the Roman name for the planet, associated with the god of war. From the earliest times our ancestors tracked the movements of the planet in the heavens and even by the time of Aristotle people
had worked out that it was a lot further away than our own moon. As early as the 5th Century, Indian astronomers had managed to calculate the diameter of the planet. In the west the planet is traditionally associated with the god of war while in the east it is associated with the element of fire. Both arose because of the distinctive red appearance of the planet.The famous ‘heretical’ astronomer Galileo was the first to view Mars through a telescope but it was not until the 19th Century that the quality of the instruments had improved enough to make detailed observation possible. From that moment interest in the planet increased exponentially. The planet looked so like our own Earth, with changing seasons and melting and expanding icecaps that the possibility of intelligent life on our ‘sister world’ seemed high. Schiaparelli and others such as Lowell, dedicated their time to taking detailed observations of the planet and saw long canals (optical illusions sadly) that looked as though they had been manufactured by intelligent beings. For a time people even believed that there might be open water and vegetation on the surface of the planet.
Of course these days, high powered telescopes and remote exploration have proved to us that that is not the case. Nevertheless there remains the possibility that Mars may have harbored life in the past and even that some form of basic life might remain hidden on the planet to this day. This makes the exploration of Mars one of the highest priorities for space exploration.
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