Word: polarizing
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Despite ingenious techniques of optical and radio telescopy, astronomers have piled up more questions about Mars than answers. What is the true nature of those strange seasonal dark-enings? Are the white polar caps composed of frozen water or, as many astronomers believe, dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide)? Do those long controversial "canals" really exist, or are they optical illusions? The 1965 flight of Mariner 4 showed that Mars is pocked by moonlike craters, apparently as a result of meteor bombardment. But the unmanned probe did not determine whether Mars can support anything remotely like earthly life...
...recorded 33 pictures and brought earthly viewers within 453,350 miles of the red planet. None of the initial photographs were particularly startling. But Caltech's Robert B. Leighton, director of the photographic work, noted that at least one picture showed a ragged edge at the south polar cap-"possibly caused by the presence of mountains or craters...
...Martian photographs from as close as 111,400 miles. Far more stunning than the earlier series, these pictures brought out what seemed like cloud formations near the south pole, verified the presence of numerous craters, and revealed shadings in what had previously been thought to be an all-white polar cap. Leighton spotted at least two features that he thought might be "canals," although he speculated that they might have been caused by electronic noise...
...many characteristics that seemed fascinatingly similar to those of earth. The red planet turned out to have an atmosphere, albeit an extremely thin one. The tilt of its axis (about 24°) is approximately the same as the earth's, thus creating seasonal changes. Its huge white polar caps suggest the presence of ice, and therefore water-a prerequisite for life as human beings know it. It also has large dark areas that grow, like earthly vegetation, in spring and recede in autumn...
...Boston Lowells (his brother Abbott Lawrence was president of Harvard, his sister was Poet Amy), had plotted more than 700 canals at his Mars observatory in Arizona. He believed that the canals had been built by an advanced civilization desperately trying to tap moisture from polar ice to conserve its dwindling water supply...