Abstract
Prior to the 1950s, Mars was considered to be the most plausible abode for advanced life in the Solar System. Even though recent explorations by robotic machines have ruled out the presence of creatures, there remains the prospect of discovering something like a microbial life form.
Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
– H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds .
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Notes and Further Reading
Giovanni Schiaparelli was the uncle of Else Schiaparelli, the inspiration behind “The House of Schiaparelli” couture and perfume business. As a child, Else would observe the heavens through her uncle’s telescopes.
Phillips TER, Steavenson WH (1923) Splendour of the Heavens. Hutchinson Publisher, Paternoster Row, London.
Ashbrook J (1984) The Astronomical Scrapbook, Cambridge University Press, Chapter 21.
This is reminiscent of another much esteemed American astronomer Simon Newcomb who, in 1903, stated that ‘flying machines’ were an impossibility. Two years later the Wright Brothers successfully flew in their heavier than air machine.
Mesa (Spanish for table) is the American English term for an elevated area of land with a flat top and sides – usually steep cliffs such as Table Mountain in South Africa.
Tucker SD (2017) Space Oddities: Our Strange Attempts to Explain the Universe, Amberley Publishing, London, p. 165.
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Kirby, G. (2018). Mars: Inhabited and a Threat?. In: Wacky and Wonderful Misconceptions About Our Universe. Astronomers' Universe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73022-6_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73022-6_6
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