Robert Zubrin (updated)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zubrin

 

Robert Zubrin
Photo of Zubrin by the Mars Society
Born	April 9, 1952 (age 67) Brooklyn, New York
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of Rochester (B.A) University of Washington (M.S), (PhD)
Known for	Mars Direct Mars Society The Case for Mars Energy Victory
Scientific career
Fields	Aerospace engineering
Institutions	Martin Marietta Pioneer Astronautics

Robert Zubrin is an American aerospace engineer and author, best known for his advocacy of human exploration of Mars. He and his colleague at Martin Marietta, David Baker, were the driving force behind Mars Direct, a proposal in a 1990 research paper intended to produce significant reductions in the cost and complexity of such a mission. The key idea was to use the Martian atmosphere to produce oxygen, water, and rocket propellant for the surface stay and return journey. A modified version of the plan was subsequently adopted by NASA as their "design reference mission". He questions the delay and cost-to-benefit ratio of first establishing a base or outpost on an asteroid or another Apollo program-like return to the Moon, as neither would be able to provide all of its own oxygen, water, or energy; these resources are producible on Mars, and he expects people would be there thereafter.

Disappointed with the lack of interest from government in Mars exploration and after the success of his book The Case for Mars (1996), as well as leadership experience at the National Space Society, Zubrin established the Mars Society in 1998. This is an international organization advocating a human mission to Mars as a goal, by private funding if possible.

Early life

Robert Zubrin was born in Brooklyn, New York on Apr 9, 1952. He was a science teacher for 7 years before becoming an engineer.

Qualifications and professional experience

Zubrin holds a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Rochester (1974), a M.S. in Nuclear Engineering (1984), a M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics (1986), and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering (1992) — all from the University of Washington. He has developed a number of concepts for space propulsion and exploration, and is the author of over 200 technical and non-technical papers and several books. He was a member of Lockheed Martin's scenario development team charged with developing strategies for space exploration. He was also "a senior engineer with the Martin Marietta Astronautics company, working as one of its leaders in development of advanced concepts for interplanetary missions". He is also President of both the Mars Society and Pioneer Astronautics, a private company that does research and development on innovative aerospace technologies. Zubrin is the co-inventor on a U.S. design patent and a U.S. utility patent on a hybrid rocket/airplane, and on a U.S. utility patent on an oxygen supply system (see links below). He was awarded his first patent at age 20 in 1972 for Three Player Chess. His inventions also include the nuclear salt-water rocket and co-inventor (with Dana Andrews) of the magnetic sail. Zubrin is fellow at Center for Security Policy.

Pioneer Energy

In 2008, Zubrin founded Pioneer Energy, a research and development firm headquartered in Lakewood, Colorado. The company's focus is to develop mobile Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) systems that can enable CO2-based EOR for both small and large oil producers in the United States. The company has also developed a number of new processes for manufacturing synthetic fuels.

Books

• The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must (1996), with Richard Wagner. This outlines the Mars Direct plan along with speculation about the economic, social and technical viability of future Mars colonization. Revised and updated in 2011.
• Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization (1999). This ranges from the current status quo and innovative startups of the aerospace industry, through exploration and colonization of Mars, to a more futuristic look at humanity's possible colonization of the solar system and the feasibility of interstellar travel with known physics.
• Mars On Earth: The Adventures of Space Pioneers in the High Arctic (2003). Zubrin recounts the origins and progress of the Mars Society's Mars Analog Research Station project, including a variety of perils, both mundane and adventurous, that were overcome in establishing the first analog Mars habitat on Devon Island in the high Arctic. He offers highlights of what has been learned so far through that effort.
• First Landing (2001), a hard science fiction novel about a future Mars flight using the Mars Direct plan.
• The Holy Land (2003). This is an "SF satire on the Middle East crisis and the War on Terrorism, and concerns what happens when the liberal Western Galactic Empire relocates the oppressed Minervan sect to their ancient homeland of Kennewick, Washington, in the midst of a United States ruled by Christian fundamentalist fanatics". The story was partly inspired by Čapek's War with the Newts.
• Benedict Arnold: A Drama of the American Revolution in Five Acts (2005). This is an effort to humanize and show the multiple dimensions of Benedict Arnold, and to contrast the democratic values embodied in the spirit of the Revolution with the socially bankrupt classism embodied in the British subjects who won Arnold to their side.
• Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil (2007). An expansion on his recent articles criticizing both reliance on oil and the potential for hydrogen energy, while highlighting the benefits of switching more toward methanol and ethanol. It carries an endorsement from former CIA director James Woolsey.
• How to Live on Mars (2008). A tongue-in-cheek technically accurate guidebook for Mars-bound Earthlings about how to survive and thrive on the Red Planet, written from the point of view of a 22nd-century Mars native.
• Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism (2011). This traces the history of antihumanism over the last two centuries, from Thomas Malthus and the eugenics movement through to the anti-nuclear and global warming campaigns. Zubrin argues that these movements have all represented an attempt to gain oppressive political control through the restriction of human activities and freedom.
• Mars Direct: Space Exploration, the Red Planet, and the Human Future (2013). This e-book looks at the current situation of NASA and outlines a Mars Direct mission proposal with the SpaceX Dragon, and considers the implications of interplanetary exploration for humanity.
• The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility Prometheus Books (2019)

Books edited or co-authored

Zubrin has also edited or co-edited the following books, most of which include his contributions:

• Mars Direct: A Simple, Robust, and Cost Effective Architecture for the Space Exploration Initiative (1991), co-edited by D.A.V.I.D. Baker and Owen Gwyne. This contains a series of rationales and data regarding the proposal of plan Mars Direct.
• Islands in the Sky: Bold New Ideas for Colonizing Space (1996), co-edited with Stanley Schmidt. This is a collection of fifteen selected non-fiction entries that had been published in Analog magazine over the years; it includes five articles authored or co-authored by Zubrin, including "The Hypersonic Skyhook", "Mars Direct: A Proposal for the Rapid Exploration and Colonization of the Red Planet" (co-authored with David A. Baker), "Colonizing the Outer Solar System", "Terraforming Mars" (co-authored with Christopher McKay), and "The Magnetic Sail". Notable additional contributors include Robert L. Forward and the godfather of terraforming, Martyn J. Fogg, each of whom contributed two articles.
• From Imagination to Reality: Mars Exploration Studies of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society : Precursors and Early Piloted Exploration Missions (1997).
• From Imagination to Reality: Mars Exploration Studies of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society : Base Building, Colonization and Terraformation (1997).
• Proceedings of the Founding Convention of the Mars Society (1999), co-edited with Maggie Zubrin. This contains articles corresponding to talks presented at the founding convention of the Mars Society in Boulder, Colorado in August 1998; it includes contributions from Zubrin, Buzz Aldrin, Martyn Fogg, and many others.
• On to Mars: Colonizing a New World (2002 Apogee Books), co-edited with Frank Crossman. This contains articles corresponding to talks presented at the annual conventions of the Mars Society in Boulder in 1999, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 2000, and at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California in 2001.
• On to Mars 2: Exploring and Settling a New World (2005 Apogee Books), co-edited with Frank Crossman. This contains over 130 articles corresponding to talks presented at the annual conventions of the Mars Society in Boulder in 2002, in Eugene, Oregon in 2003, and in Chicago, Illinois in 2004.

The ethics of terraforming

Dr. Zubrin is known as an advocate of a moderately anthropocentric position in the ethics of terraforming. Discussions of the ethics of terraforming often make reference to a series of public debates Zubrin has held with his friend Christopher McKay, who advocates a moderately biocentric position on the ethics of terraforming. For example, a written account of some of these debates is available in On to Mars: Colonizing a New World, as a joint article, "Do Indigenous Martian Bacteria have Precedence over Human Exploration?" (pp. 177–182)

Cultural references

An aging Robert Zubrin also appears as a background character in The Martian Race (1999) by Gregory Benford, a science fiction novel depicting early human explorers on Mars in the very near future. Benford, who is also an astrophysicist, is a longtime member of both the board of directors and the steering committee of the Mars Society. 

Robert Zubrin was also featured in a 2007 CBC Television documentary special, The Passionate Eye, dubbed "The Mars Underground".

The songwriter and musician Frank Black (alias Black Francis of the Pixies) penned an homage to Zubrin, "Robert Onion", on the album Dog in the Sand. The lyrics are in the form of an acrostic, spelling "Robert The Case For Mars Zubrin".

In 2010 Robert Zubrin was featured in the Symphony of Science video "The Case for Mars" along with Carl Sagan, Brian Cox, and Penelope Boston.

The fictional character Dr. Zachary Walzer in the 2010-11 independent VODO series Pioneer One was inspired by Zubrin.

In 2016, Zubrin was one of several scientists and engineers interviewed in the National Geographic miniseries Mars. 

Patents

• U.S. design patent D405,750, "Reusable rocket airplane"
• U.S. Patent 6,119,985, "Reusable rocket-propelled high altitude airplane and method and apparatus for mid-air oxidizer transfer to said airplane"
• U.S. Patent 6,347,627, "Nitrous oxide based oxygen supply system"
• U.S. Patent 3,652,091, "Three-player chess board"

Richard C. Hoagland

style="text-align: justify;">

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C._Hoagland

 

Richard C. Hoagland
Born	Richard Charles Hoagland April 25, 1945 Morristown, New Jersey, U.S.
Nationality	American
Citizenship	United States
Known for	Theories about advanced ancient civilizations colonizing the solar system; accusations of corruption of NASA and U.S. government
Notable work	The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever
Awards	International Angstrom Medal for Excellence in Science, 1993. Ig Nobel Prize for Astronomy, 1997.

Richard Charles Hoagland (born April 25, 1945), is an American author, and a proponent of various conspiracy theories about NASA, lost alien civilizations on the Moon and on Mars and other related topics. Hoagland has been documented to misappropriate others' professional achievements and is widely described as a conspiracy theorist and fringe pseudoscientist.

Background

Hoagland has no education beyond the high school level. According to Hoagland's own curriculum vitae he has no advanced training, schooling or degrees in any scientific field. Hoagland asserts he was a Curator of Astronomy and Space Science at the Springfield Science Museum, 1964–1967, and Assistant Director at the Gengras Science Center in West Hartford, Connecticut, 1967–1968, and a Science Advisor to CBS News during the Apollo program, 1968–1971. In July 1968, Hoagland filed a copyright registration for a planetarium presentation and show script called The Grand Tour.

A popular planetarium lecturer at the Springfield Science Museum, Hoagland produced a program called "Mars: Infinity to 1965" to coincide with the Mariners 3 and 4 missions. He designed a room with special equipments to display the relative positions of the Earth, Mars and the Mariners during their trip and thereafter contracted with NASA to relay the pictures of the Martian surface, on a near-live-feed, to the general audience. Hoagland co-hosted a radio program for WTIC (AM) in Hartford, Connecticut, The Night of the Encounter, along with Dick Bertel, covering the July 14, 1965 Mariner 4 flyby of the planet Mars. Local newspapers had noted the radio broadcast to be history's first laser audio transmission.

In 1976, Hoagland, an avid Star Trek fan, initiated a letter-writing campaign that successfully persuaded President Gerald Ford to name the first Space Shuttle the Enterprise, replacing the previously slated name for the prototype vehicle, Constitution.

Hoagland authored the book The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever (published in 1987), and co-authored the book Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA, which was ranked 21st on November 18, 2007 on The New York Times Best Seller list for paperback nonfiction. Richard Grossinger, the founder of North Atlantic Books, writes that Monuments became the most successful title published by North Atlantic, and that at its peak the book sold over 2000 copies per month. Grossinger also reports that Hoagland wrote much of the book while in Los Angeles county jail.

Hoagland runs The Enterprise Mission website, which he describes as "an independent NASA watchdog and research group, the Enterprise Mission, attempting to figure out how much of what NASA has found in the solar system over the past 50 years has actually been silently filed out of sight as classified material, and therefore totally unknown to the American people."

Hoagland appeared regularly as the "Science Advisor" for Coast to Coast AM, a late-night radio talk show, until being replaced by Robert Zimmerman in July 2015.

While Hoagland makes frequent reference to his receipt of the "International Angstrom Medal for Excellence in Science" in August 1993, the organization that awarded the medal, The Angstrom Foundation Aktiebolag, founded by Lars-Jonas Ångström, was not authorized by Uppsala University or the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to make use of the academy's Anders Jonas Ångström memorial medal. The academy has long authorized only Uppsala University to use their medal for the Ångström's Prize (Ångströms premium), awarded yearly by Uppsala professors to physics students. Mr. Ångström stated in May 2000 that although his award to Hoagland was a mistake, he acted with good faith and with good intentions.

Claims by Hoagland

Hoagland claims the source of a so-called NASA "coverup", with relation to the "Face on Mars" and other related structures, is the result of a report commissioned by NASA authored by the Brookings Institution, the so-called Brookings Report. The 1960 report, entitled "Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs", is claimed by Hoagland, on page 216 of the report, to instruct NASA to deliberately withhold from the public any evidence it may find of extraterrestrial activity, specifically, on the moon, Mars or Venus.

Hoagland has also proposed a form of physics he calls "hyperdimensional physics", which he claims represents a more complete implementation of James Clerk Maxwell's original 20 quaternion equations, instead of the original Maxwell's equations as amended by Oliver Heaviside commonly taught today. These ideas are rejected by the mainstream physics community as unfounded.

Hoagland claims the "Face on Mars" is part of a city built on Cydonia Planitia consisting of very large pyramids and mounds arranged in a geometric pattern. To Hoagland, this is evidence that an advanced civilization might once have existed on Mars. In the years since its discovery, the "face" has been near-universally accepted as an optical illusion, an example of the psychological phenomenon of pareidolia. Similar optical illusions can be found in the geology of Earth; examples include the Old Man of the Mountain, the Pedra da Gávea, and Stac Levenish.

Although the Pioneer 10 plaque was designed entirely by Carl Sagan, Linda Salzman Sagan, and Frank Drake, Hoagland has inaccurately asserted that he co-created the plaque with Eric Burgess. In 1990, Hoagland tried to take credit for the plaque, asserting that "Carl for many years has been taking public credit for the Pioneer plaque which, of course, Eric Burgess and I conceived." Later that year Hoagland went so far as to claim he designed the plaque when he said "Carl... was involved with Eric Burgess and me in the design of [the] message." Burgess' own account is at odds with Hoagland's design claims, stating that "The design itself was created by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake, with the artistic help of Sagan’s then-wife Linda Salzman Sagan", without mentioning Hoagland at all. Sagan's own correspondence regarding the matter also contradict Hoagland's claims, specifically saying that "he did not contribute one bit of data towards the message design." Burgess recalls similarly, adding that all Hoagland did with regard to the plaque "was support me and say it's a good idea." And yet Hoagland's website still incorrectly credits him as 'co-creator of the "Pioneer Plaque"'

Hoagland Controversies

In 2011, researcher Andrew Johnson created an in-depth, point-by-point denouncement of Richard Hoagland's "misappropriation" of his and Judy Wood's work in a speech given by Hoagland in Amsterdam on Sunday April 3, 2011. At various points in his nearly three hour lecture, Hoagland presented various theories, research and data originally and previously created by Wood and/or Johnson as his own, with no prior consent given.

At various times, including on the July 2, 2013 Coast to Coast AM broadcast, Hoagland has claimed that the idea to drop a feather and a hammer simultaneously on the moon was his. In actual fact, the stunt was thought up primarily by Joe Allen, with some help from Dave Scott and Jim Irwin.

On Hoagland's own digital podcast, he claimed on the November 11, 2015 to have coined the phrase, "On the internet nobody knows you're a dog." A simple check of the facts shows that Peter Steiner first published this phrase in a cartoon in the New Yorker published on July 5, 1993.

Responses by scientists

Many scientists have responded to Hoagland's claims and assertions. Professional astronomer Phil Plait described Hoagland as a pseudoscientist and his claims as ridiculous. Plait has also criticized Hoagland for having no university degree. Prof. Ralph Greenberg asserted that the logic of Hoagland's deductions from the geometry of Cydonia Mensae is flawed and says that he is not a trained scientist in any sense. The claim that the crashing of the Galileo orbiter into Jupiter caused a "mysterious black spot" on the planet has since been disputed by both NASA and Plait. There is photographic evidence that a similar "black spot" was present in imagery of Jupiter taken in 1998. A second image referenced by Plait shows a dark ring which looks similar to the spot Hoagland cited. In 1995, Malin Space Science Systems, NASA prime contractor for planetary imaging, published a paper critiquing claims that the "city" at Cydonia is artificial, the claimed mathematical relationships, and — very specifically — denying any claims about concealing questionable data from the public.

In October 1997, Hoagland received the Ig Nobel Prize for Astronomy "for identifying artificial features on the moon and on Mars, including a human face on Mars and ten-mile high buildings on the far side of the moon." The prize is a parody award given for outlandish or "trivial" contributions to science.

Publications

Books

• Hoagland, Richard C. (2002). The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever (5th ed.). Berkeley: Frog, Ltd. ISBN 978-1-58394-054-9.
• Hoagland, Richard C.; Bara, Mike (2009). Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA, Revised and Expanded Edition. Port Townsend: Feral House. ISBN 978-1-932595-48-2.
• Hoagland, Richard C. (2015). Grossinger, Richard (ed.). New Horizon ... for a Lost Horizon, chapter in : Pluto: New Horizons for a Lost Horizon. North Atlantic Books. p. 312. ISBN 978-1583948972.

Contributions, introductions, forewords

• Hoagland, Richard C.; Bova, Ben (May 1977). "The origin of the solar system". In Bova, Ben; Bell, Trudy E. (eds.). Closeup: new worlds. Chapter by Richard C. Hoagland and Ben Bova. New York: St. Martin's Press. Bibcode:1977cnw..book.....B. ISBN 978-0-312-14490-6.
• Haas, George J.; Saunders, William R. (2005). The Cydonia Codex: Reflections from Mars. Forewords by Mark J. Carlotto and Richard C. Hoagland. ISBN 978-1-58394-121-8.
• NASA (1972). "The Moon". In Hoagland, Richard C. (ed.). NASA Apollo Spacecraft Lunar Excursion Module News Reference. Chapter by Richard C. Hoagland. Periscope Film LLC (published September 2011). ISBN 978-1-937684-98-3.

 

Videos

Hoagland, Richard C. (Author (with NASA Lewis Research Center)) (1990). Monuments of Mars: City on the Edge of Forever (VHS tape). Cleveland, OH: NASA Lewis Research Center. OCLC 23350482.

Hoagland, Richard C. (Executive Producer, Writer (with Geline, Robert J.)) (1992). The Monuments of Mars: A Terrestrial Connection (VHS tape). New York: BC Video Inc. OCLC 41520112.

Hoagland, Richard C. (1996). Hoagland's Mars, Vol. 1, The NASA-Cydonia Briefings (VHS tape). Venice, CA: UFO Central Home Video. OCLC 41559991. Short version, revised and updated

Hoagland, Richard C. (2008). The Hypoerdimensional Election of Barak Obama and 2012 (DVD). The Enterprise Mission.

Hoagland, Richard C. (Disk 1: "The Gods of Cydonia: The Case for Ancient Artificial Structures in the Solar System") (2005). God, Man and ET: The Question of Other Worlds in Science, Theology, and Mythology (DVD). Venice, CA: Knowledge 2020 Media. OCLC 58528205.

Cydonia (Mars) "Face_on_Mars"

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydonia_(Mars)#%22Face_on_Mars%22

Coordinates: 40.74°N 9.46°W

Small part of the Cydonia region, taken by the Viking 1 orbiter and released by NASA/JPL on July 25, 1976

 

Cydonia (/sɪˈdoʊniə/, /saɪˈdoʊniə/) is a region on the planet Mars that has attracted both scientific and popular interest. The name originally referred to the albedo feature (distinctively coloured area) that was visible from Earthbound telescopes. The area borders plains of Acidalia Planitia and the Arabia Terra highlands. The area includes the regions: "Cydonia Mensae", an area of flat-topped mesa-like features, "Cydonia Colles", a region of small hills or knobs, and "Cydonia Labyrinthus", a complex of intersecting valleys. As with other albedo features on Mars, the name Cydonia was drawn from classical antiquity, in this case from Cydonia or Kydonia (/sɪˈdoʊniə/; Ancient Greek: Κυδωνία; Latin: Cydonia), a historic polis (city state) on the island of Crete. Cydonia contains the "Face on Mars", located about halfway between Arandas Crater and Bamberg Crater.

Location

Cydonia lies in the planet's northern hemisphere in a transitional zone between the heavily cratered regions to the south and relatively smooth plains to the north. Some planetologists believe that the northern plains may once have been ocean beds, and that Cydonia may once have been a coastal zone. It is in the Mare Acidalium quadrangle. 

Picture of the Cydonia region taken in 2006 by The European Space Agency's satellite Mars Express.

"Face on Mars"

Cropped version of the original batch-processed image (#035A72) of the "Face on Mars". The black dots that give the image a speckled appearance are data errors (salt-and-pepper noise).

 

1976 Viking Orbiter image (left, image #070A13) compared with the 2001 Mars Global Surveyor image (right). The "Face" is 1.5 km across in size.

 

Cydonia was first imaged in detail by the Viking 1 and Viking 2 orbiters. Eighteen images of the Cydonia region were taken by the orbiters, of which seven have resolutions better than 250 m/pixel (820 ft/pixel). The other eleven images have resolutions that are worse than 550 m/pixel (1800 ft/pixel) and are of limited use for studying surface features. Of the seven good images, the lighting and time at which two pairs of images were taken are so close as to reduce the number to five distinct images. The Mission to Mars: Viking Orbiter Images of Mars CD-ROM set image numbers for these are: 035A72 (VO-1010), 070A13 (VO-1011), 561A25 (VO-1021), 673B54 & 673B56 (VO-1063), and 753A33 & 753A34 (VO-1028).

In one of the images taken by Viking 1 on July 25, 1976, a two-kilometre-long (1.2 mi) Cydonian mesa, situated at 40.75° north latitude and 9.46° west longitude, had the appearance of a humanoid face. When the image was originally acquired, Viking chief scientist Gerry Soffen dismissed the "Face on Mars" in image 035A72 as a "trick of light and shadow". However, a second image, 070A13, also shows the "face", and was acquired 35 Viking orbits later at a different sun-angle from the 035A72 image. This latter discovery was made independently by Vincent DiPietro and Gregory Molenaar, two computer engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. DiPietro and Molenaar discovered the two misfiled images, Viking frames 035A72 and 070A13, while searching through NASA archives. The resolution of these images was of about 50 m/pixel.

Later imagery

More than 20 years after the Viking 1 images were taken, a succession of spacecraft visited Mars and made new observations of the Cydonia region. These spacecraft have included NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (1997–2006) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2006–), and the European Space Agency's Mars Express probe (2003–). In contrast to the relatively low resolution of the Viking images of Cydonia, these new platforms afford much improved resolution. For instance, the Mars Express images are at a resolution of 14 m/pixel (46 ft/pixel) or better. By combining data from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on the Mars Express probe and the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on board NASA's Mars Global Surveyor it has been possible to create a three-dimensional representation of the "Face on Mars".

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image by its HiRISE camera of the "Face on Mars". Viking Orbiter image inset in bottom right corner.

 

Mars Global Surveyor image (MOC camera) of the same feature.

 

One of many formations in Cydonia, this one is sometimes called the "D & M pyramid".

 

Since it was originally first imaged, the face has been accepted by scientists as an optical illusion, an example of the psychological phenomenon of pareidolia. After analysis of the higher resolution Mars Global Surveyor data NASA stated that "a detailed analysis of multiple images of this feature reveals a natural looking Martian hill whose illusory face-like appearance depends on the viewing angle and angle of illumination". Similar optical illusions can be found in the geology of Earth; examples include the Old Man of the Mountain, the Romanian Sphinx, Giewont, the Pedra da Gávea, the Old Man of Hoy, Stac Levenish, Sleeping Ute, and the Badlands Guardian.

Speculation

The Cydonia facial pareidolia inspired individuals and organizations interested in extraterrestrial intelligence and visitations to Earth, and the images were published in this context in 1977. Some commentators, most notably Richard C. Hoagland, believe the "Face on Mars" to be evidence of a long-lost Martian civilization along with other features they believe are present, such as apparent pyramids, which they argue are part of a ruined city.

While accepting the "face" as a subject for scientific study, astronomer Carl Sagan criticized much of the speculation concerning it in the chapter "The Man in the Moon and the Face on Mars" in his 1995 book The Demon-Haunted World. The shape-from-shading work by Dr. Mark J. Carlotto was used by Sagan in a chapter of his famous Cosmos series. In 1998 a news article about the "Space Face" quoted a scientist talking about deciphering "intelligent design" in nature. A cutting of this was used by Charles Thaxton as an overhead visual for a lecture at Princeton, in his first public use of the term "intelligent design" as a substitute for creation science.

The "face" is also a common topic among skeptics groups, who use it as an example of credulity. They point out that there are other faces on Mars but these do not elicit the same level of study. One example is the Galle Crater, which takes the form of a smiley, while others resemble Kermit the Frog or other celebrities. On this latter similarity, Discover magazine's "Skeptical Eye" column ridiculed Hoagland's claims, asking if he believed the aliens were fans of Sesame Street.

In popular culture

As a result of the speculation concerning their artificial origins, Cydonia and the "Face on Mars" appear frequently in popular culture, including feature films, television series, video games, comic books, and even popular music. For example: films featuring the structures include Mission to Mars (2000); TV series include The X-Files ("Space", 1993), Invader Zim ("Battle of the Planets", 2002), Futurama ("Where the Buggalo Roam", 2002), Phineas and Ferb ("Unfair Science Fair", 2009); video games include Zak McKracken (1988), Final Fantasy IV (1991), Ultima Martian Dreams (1991), X-COM: UFO Defense (1993), SWIV 3D (1996), Red Faction: Guerrilla (2009), Kerbal Space Program (2015), Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (2016); comic books include Martian Manhunter (#1, 1998); and music includes Cydonia from the album Implant by Eat Static (1994), Telemetry of a Fallen Angel by The Crüxshadows (1995), Cydonia by Crimson Glory (1999), "Knights of Cydonia" by Muse (2006) and Hunting & Gathering (Cydonia) by Sunn O))) (2009).

In 1958, almost two decades prior to the first images of the Face from the Viking probes, the comic book artist Jack Kirby wrote a story entitled "The Face on Mars" for Harvey Comics (Race for the Moon Number 2, September 1958), in which a large face (oriented vertically rather than horizontally) served as a monument to an extinct humanoid race from Mars.

Martian canal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canal

1877 map of Mars by Giovanni Schiaparelli.

 

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was erroneously believed that there were "canals" on the planet Mars. These were a network of long straight lines in the equatorial regions from 60° north to 60° south latitude on Mars, observed by astronomers using early low-resolution telescopes without photography. They were first described by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli during the opposition of 1877, and confirmed by later observers. Schiaparelli called these canali, which was translated into English as "canals". The Irish astronomer Charles E. Burton made some of the earliest drawings of straight-line features on Mars, although his drawings did not match Schiaparelli's. Around the turn of the century there was even speculation that they were engineering works, irrigation canals constructed by a civilization of intelligent aliens indigenous to Mars. By the early 20th century, improved astronomical observations revealed the "canals" to be an optical illusion, and modern high-resolution mapping of the Martian surface by spacecraft shows no such features. 

History

Mars as seen through 6-inch (15 cm) aperture reflecting telescope, as Schiaparelli may have seen it.

 

Martian canals depicted by Percival Lowell

 

The Italian word canale (plural canali) can mean "canal", "channel", "duct" or "gully".^[1] The first person to use the word canale in connection with Mars was Angelo Secchi in 1858, although he did not see any straight lines and applied the term to large features —for example, he used the name "Canale Atlantico" for what later came to be called Syrtis Major Planum.

It is not necessarily odd that the idea of Martian canals was so readily accepted by many. At this time in the late 19th century, astronomical observations were made without photography. Astronomers had to stare for hours through their telescopes, waiting for a moment of still air when the image was clear, and then draw a picture of what they had seen. They saw some lighter or darker albedo features (for instance Syrtis Major) and believed that they were seeing oceans and continents. They also believed that Mars had a relatively substantial atmosphere. They knew that the rotation period of Mars (the length of its day) was almost the same as Earth's, and they knew that Mars' axial tilt was also almost the same as Earth's, which meant it had seasons in the astronomical and meteorological sense. They could also see Mars' polar ice caps shrinking and growing with these changing seasons. It was only when they interpreted changes in surface features as being due to the seasonal growth of plants that life was hypothesized by them (in fact, Martian dust storms are responsible for some of this). By the late 1920s, however, it was known that Mars is very dry and has a very low atmospheric pressure. 

In 1889, American astronomer Charles A. Young reported that Schiaparelli's canal discovery of 1877 had been confirmed in 1881, though new canals had appeared where there had not been any before, prompting "very important and perplexing" questions as to their origin.

During the favourable opposition of 1892, W. H. Pickering observed numerous small circular black spots occurring at every intersection or starting-point of the "canals". Many of these had been seen by Schiaparelli as larger dark patches, and were termed seas or lakes; but Pickering's observatory was at Arequipa, Peru, about 2400 meters above the sea, and with such atmospheric conditions as were, in his opinion, equal to a doubling of telescopic aperture. They were soon detected by other observers, especially by Lowell.

During the oppositions of 1892 and 1894, seasonal color changes were reported. As the polar snows melted the adjacent seas appeared to overflow and spread out as far as the tropics, and were often seen to assume a distinctly green colour. At this time (1894) it began to be doubted whether there were any seas at all on Mars. Under the best conditions, these supposed 'seas' were seen to lose all trace of uniformity, their appearance being that of a mountainous country, broken by ridges, rifts, and canyons, seen from a great elevation. These doubts soon became certainties, and it is now universally agreed that Mars possesses no permanent bodies of surface water.

Interpretation as engineering works

During the 1894 opposition, the idea that Schiaparelli's canali were really irrigation canals made by intelligent beings was first hinted at, and then adopted as the only intelligible explanation, by American astronomer Percival Lowell and a few others. The visible seasonal melting of Mars polar icecaps fueled speculation that an advanced alien race indigenous to Mars built canals to transport the water to drier equatorial regions. Newspaper and magazine articles about Martian canals and "Martians" captured the public imagination. Lowell published his views in three books: Mars (1895), Mars and Its Canals (1906), and Mars As the Abode of Life (1908). He remained a strong proponent for the rest of his life of the idea that the canals were built for irrigation by an intelligent civilization, going much further than Schiaparelli, who for his part considered much of the detail on Lowell's drawings to be imaginary. Some observers drew maps in which dozens if not hundreds of canals were shown with an elaborate nomenclature for all of them. Some observers saw a phenomenon they called "gemination", or doubling – two parallel canals. The late 19th century was a time of construction of giant infrastructure projects of all kinds, and particularly canal building. For instance, the Suez Canal was completed in 1869, and the abortive French attempt to build the Panama Canal began in 1880. It is understandable that 19th century people who accepted the idea of a Mars inhabited by a civilization might interpret the canal features as giant engineering works.

Doubts

Other observers disputed the notion of canals. The observer E. E. Barnard did not see them. In 1903, Joseph Edward Evans and Edward Maunder conducted visual experiments using schoolboy volunteers that demonstrated how the canals could arise as an optical illusion. This is because when a poor-quality telescope views many point-like features (e.g. sunspots or craters) they appear to join up to form lines. In 1907 the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace published the book Is Mars Habitable? that severely criticized Lowell's claims. Wallace's analysis showed that the surface of Mars was almost certainly much colder than Lowell had estimated, and that the atmospheric pressure was too low for liquid water to exist on the surface; and he pointed out that several recent efforts to find evidence of water vapor in the Martian atmosphere with spectroscopic analysis had failed. He concluded that complex life was impossible, let alone the planet-girding irrigation system claimed by Lowell. The influential observer Eugène Antoniadi used the 83-cm (32.6 inch) aperture telescope at Meudon Observatory at the 1909 opposition of Mars and saw no canals, the outstanding photos of Mars taken at the new Baillaud dome at the Pic du Midi observatory also brought formal discredit to the Martian canals theory in 1909, and the notion of canals began to fall out of favor. Around this time spectroscopic analysis also began to show that no water was present in the Martian atmosphere. However, as of 1916 Waldemar Kaempffert (editor of Scientific American and later Popular Science Monthly) was still vigorously defending the Martian canals theory against skeptics.

Spacecraft evidence

Mars by Rosetta spacecraft on 24 February 2007.

 

Mars surface by Mariner 4 in 1965

 

The arrival of the United States' Mariner 4 spacecraft in 1965, which took pictures revealing impact craters and a generally barren landscape, was the final nail in the coffin of the idea that Mars could be inhabited by higher forms of life, or that any canal features existed. A surface atmospheric pressure of 4.1 to 7.0 millibars (410 to 700 pascals), 0.4% to 0.7% of Earth atmospheric pressure, and daytime temperatures of −100 degrees Celsius were estimated. No magnetic field or Martian radiation belts were detected.

William Kenneth Hartmann, a Mars imaging scientist from the 1960s to the 2000s, explains the "canals" as streaks of dust caused by wind on the leeward side of mountains and craters.

In popular culture

A clement twilight zone on a synchronously rotating Mercury, a swamp‐and‐jungle Venus, and a canal‐infested Mars, while all classic science‐fiction devices, are all, in fact, based upon earlier misapprehensions by planetary scientists.

— Carl Sagan, 1978

Although the concept of the canals had been available since Schiaparelli's 1877 description of them, early fictional descriptions of Mars omitted these features. They receive no mention, for instance, in H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1897), which describes a slowly drying Mars, covetous of Earth's resources, but one which still has dwindling oceans such as are depicted on Schiaparelli's maps. Later works of fiction, influenced by the works of Lowell, described an ever-more arid Mars, and the canals became a more prominent feature, though how they were explained varied widely from author to author.

• Camille Flammarion's Uranie (1889, published as Urania in English in 1890) include descriptions of life on Mars; "They have straightened and enlarged the watercourses and made them like canals, and have constructed a network of immense canals all over the continents. The continents themselves are not bristling all over with Alpine or Himalayan upheavals like those of the terrestrial globe, but are immense plains, crossed in all directions by canals, which connect all the seas with one another, and by streams made to resemble canals."
• Garrett P. Serviss' Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898) repeatedly mentions Schiaparellian canals (which play a key part in the denouement of the story), but does not describe them in detail, apparently considering them simply irrigation canals comparable to those on Earth — ignoring the fact that, in that case, they could hardly be visible from Earth. Serviss' Mars also has lakes and oceans.
• George Griffith's A Honeymoon in Space (1900) describes the canals as the remnants of gulfs and straits "widened and deepened and lengthened by... Martian labour".
• Carl Jung's inaugural dissertation for his medical degree, On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena (1902), describes the recounts of a 15-year-old patient, a medium who encountered supernatural beings during seance: "she told us all the peculiarities of the star-dwellers:... the whole of Mars is covered with canals, the canals are all flat ditches, the water in them is very shallow. The excavating of the canals caused the Martians no particular trouble, as the soil there is lighter than on earth."^[14]
• Edgar Rice Burroughs' influential A Princess of Mars (1912) describes an almost entirely desert Mars, with only one small body of liquid water on the surface (though swamps and forests appear in the sequels). The canals, or waterways as Burroughs calls them, are still irrigation works, but these are surrounded by wide cultivated tracts of farmland which make their visibility somewhat credible.
• Alexander Bogdanov's Engineer Menni (1913) details the social, scientific, and political history of the construction of the Martian canals and the socio-economic ramifications the construction had on Martian society.
• Otis Adelbert Kline's Outlaws of Mars (1933) has multiple parallel canals, surrounded by walls and terraces, and describes the construction of the canals by Martian machines.
• In Stanley G. Weinbaum's A Martian Odyssey (1934) the lead character Jarvis crosses several canals: One is "a dry ditch about four hundred feet wide, and straight as a railroad on its own company map." Some canals have "mud cities" and vegetation beside them. One appears to be covered with what looks like a nice green lawn, but turns out to be hundreds of small creatures that move out of the way when approached. In the sequel Valley of Dreams (1934) it is discovered that the various races on Mars cooperatively maintain the canal system, driving water northward from the southern polar icecap.
• In C. S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet (1938), the "canals" (handramit in Martian) are actually vast rifts in the surface of an almost airless, desert Mars, in which the only breathable atmosphere and water have collected where life is possible, with the rest of Mars being entirely dead. As depicted by Lewis, these were of artificial origin – a vast engineering project undertaken long ago by the Martians to save what was left of their planet, after Mars was attacked and devastated by the evil Guardian Angel of Earth (who, in Lewis' system of theological Science Fiction, is the same as Satan).
• In the Captain Future book Outlaw World (1946), it is stated that Mars is kept alive by the ancient canal system carrying water from its polar caps. The most tightly kept secret of the planet is that radium powered engines are required to keep the water flowing.
• Robert A. Heinlein gave two depictions of the Martian canals:
  • In The Green Hills of Earth (1947), the blind poet Rhysling, composes "The Grand Canal", describing the beauty of Mars' main canal as he saw it when first arriving on Mars. Having later become blind, Rhysling does not realize that human colonists have proceeded in short order to heavily pollute the canals with industrial wastes, tear down half of the delicate beautiful structures at the canal side and convert the other half to industrial uses – with the remnant of the indigenous Martians helpless to stop them.
  • In Red Planet (1949), colonists use the frozen canals for travel and a seasonal migration (by iceboat during winter when the canals are frozen and by boat when the ice melts during the Martian summer). Teenagers Jim Marlowe and Frank Sutton set out to skate the thousands of miles to their homes on the frozen Martian canals when escaping the Lowell Academy boarding school.
• The 180,000 year old narrator of Fredric Brown's "Letter to a Phoenix" (1949) mentions he was one of the people digging the canals.
• In Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles (1950), the canals are artificial waterways stretching between stone banks, filled with blue water, or sometimes poetically described as full of "green liquors" or "lavender wine". Bradbury revisited the martian canals in 1967 in his short story "The Lost City of Mars".
• In Lester del Rey's Marooned on Mars (1952), the canals turn out to be a broad vine-like plant growing a vast distance across the planet's surface.
• In the BBC radio production Journey into Space: The Red Planet (1954–1955), the canals are valleys filled with a plant life resembling giant rhubarbs.
• In Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Kit Draper and Friday flee from the enemy aliens through the underground canals on their way to the polar ice cap.
• In Colin Greenland's Take Back Plenty (1990), humans arriving on Mars discover a networks of canals in very bad condition due to the long period since the original builders became extinct. Human colonists energetically renovate the canals and put them to renewed use, discover at the Grand Canal the colossal buried city of the original builders, excavate it and build a thriving human city all around it. The human city is named "Schiaparelli".
• The Mars of the steampunk role-playing game Space: 1889 (1988) is crisscrossed by artificial canals which support cities inhabited by the ancient civilization of the Canal Martians.
• The 1991 computer game Ultima: Martian Dreams features a plot based around Victorian expeditions to Mars. The Martian canals play a very prominent role as the main characters have to find a way to refill them using ice from the polar caps.
• Kim Stanley Robinson's science fiction chronicling of the terraforming of Mars in the Mars trilogy (1993–1999) and 2312 (2012) features the creation of canals on Mars ("burned" into the land with magnified sunlight) with the Lowell maps as inspiration. "Thus a nineteenth-century fantasy forms the basis for the actual landscape."
• In S. M. Stirling's 2008 In the Courts of the Crimson Kings alternate history novel Mars is terraformed and seeded with earth life including early humans, at some point in prehistory. The humans of Mars do indeed build a planet wide canal network due to their world's exceptional dryness, however it's left ambiguous whether or not these were what Lowell actually saw in the 19th century.
• Ken Kalfus's 2013 novel, Equilateral, is based entirely on the supposed existence of "man"-made Martian canals and on the construction of a vast triangle in the Arabian desert in order to communicate with the Martian beings.
• Scott Walker's "Lullaby" from the 2014 album Soused (with Sunn O)))) contains the lyrics, "Tonight my assistant will hear the canals of Mars." The composition first appeared on Ute Lemper's 2000 album, Punishing Kiss.
• "Seeds of the Dusk" is a short story by Raymond Raymond Z. Gallun about a far-future twilight race of humans and animals on earth that are threatened by a newcomer plant that can defend itself adaptively, even killing an attacker. As it propagates and links in long chains with others of its species, the linked chains of plants begin pumping water through their specially formed inner chambers. At the end it is made apparent that the spores of the plant had drifted to Earth from Mars, and it was beginning to form long canals on Earth as it had done on Mars.

List of canals

The canals were named, by Schiaparelli and others, after real and legendary rivers of various places on Earth or the mythological underworld.