Word: marse
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The idea that there might be intelligent life on Mars took root in the 17th century, after Johannes Kepler developed his theory of planetary motion, which helped rebut the old Ptolemaic idea of an earth-centered system of celestial bodies. Kepler's ideas supported the Copernican theory that the...
As scientific techniques improved, astronomers saw enough to become increasingly convinced that most planets were inhospitable to life. Yet Mars continued to provoke serious speculation, largely because it showed so many characteristics that seemed fascinatingly similar to those of earth. The red planet turned out to have an atmosphere, albeit...
In 1877, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli (an uncle of the present-day Paris couturier) reported mysterious lines, or canali, linking those dark areas. By 1906, Percival Lowell, an amateur astronomer and one of the Boston Lowells (his brother Abbott Lawrence was president of Harvard, his sister was Poet...
Arguments over the possibility of advanced intelligence on Mars are dying slowly. Only a decade ago, a Soviet astronomer suggested quite seriously that Mars' two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos (Fear and Terror, named after the two attendants of the ancient god of war), might be artificial satellites sent...
In simulated tests on earth, however, such lowly forms of life as bacteria have survived in a Marslike environment. Moreover, some biologists theorize, life could have evolved on Mars by entirely unfamiliar biological processes. That does not mean that scientists expect to find strange, advanced beings on Mars. But they...