Mars appears to be our twin in some ways—it is rocky, nearby, and of similar size. But after many a hopeful prodding, Mars remains a dead body. The rover Curiosity made a happy discovery last month, photographing river rocks in an ancient Martian streambed. This led Claire L. Evans to straighten out the legendary “canals” of Mars, popularized by astronomers such as Percival Lowell in the nineteenth century. Lowell’s carefully mapped waterways were much nearer than he thought—likely “projections of the vein structure of his own eyeball, a known nuisance among planetary observers using very high magnification.” No stranger to canals himself, Greg Laden writes “early research on Mars also suggested the possibility of ancient free water on the planet, and eventually, these suggestions panned out.” With a history of flowing water, could life on Mars have been far behind? Curiosity may soon have the answer.
Martian Myopia
Those of you who know me know that I'm unhappy living here in Arizona.
People love to speculate that Mars was once a great place for life to form, and claim that there is plenty of evidence that there used to be oceans and rivers there. But this isn't true.
"Years of science fiction have produced a mindset that it is human destiny to expand from Earth, to the Moon, to Mars, to the stars." -Barney Oliver
Ethan Siegel calls Mars "the obvious first step in our journey to the stars" and "part of our dreams for reaching out into the Universe." Last year thousands of people applied to join Mars One, a proposed colonization effort slash reality show that plans to put