Tag Archives: Noachian Period

A Watery Mars; Canals, a duped radio audience, and geological excursions

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Map of Martian canals by Schiaparelli in 1888

Title page to H.G.Wells iconic book, 1927Deceptive news is the art of pulling wool over the eyes of the populace, a tool (recently resurrected by certain politicians) for persuasion or dissuasion.  Orson Welles got more than he bargained for when, on October 30, 1938, he orchestrated a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells The War of The Worlds, a 1898 sci-fi that pits intelligent Martians against Victorian Britain.  Welles broadcast created a mix of amusement in some commentators, and in others panic and anger; panic in the unwitting, anger in the duped (especially other broadcasters), and amusement in all the above.

Well’s novel, apart from being the product of an agile mind, was influenced by some of the popular astronomical ideas of his time.  Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli produced, in 1888 a wonderfully detailed map of Mars showing (above image), among features such as seas, islands, and other landmasses, a network of ‘canali’, or channels.  Canali was misinterpreted in English as canals, and along with all its connotations of intelligent life, the idea of Martian canals entered popular belief. Continue reading

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Sand dunes but no beach; a Martian breeze

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A Recent barchan dune from northern NZ

When James Hutton in 1785 presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh his ideas on the uniformity of earth processes (over vast tracts of time), he did so with both feet planted firmly on good Scottish ground.  Hutton’s Principle, for which Archibald Geikie later (1905) coined the phrase “The present is the key to the past” gave to geologists a kind of warrant to interpret the geological past using observations and experiments of processes we see in action today (see an earlier post for a bit more discussion on this philosophy).  One wonders whether either of these gentlemen gave thought to the Principle being used to interpret processes elsewhere in our solar system.

There is of course, no logical reason why we cannot use terrestrial environments and physical-chemical-biological processes to unravel the geology on our solar neighbours.  We may need to extend our thinking beyond purely earth-bound processes, but the Principle remains a starting point for scientific thinking, interpretation, and discovery.  Mars provides the perfect opportunity for this scientific adventure. Continue reading

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