Mars and Martians
Scientific speculation
about intelligent life on Mars has shaped both popular ideas about
extraterrestrials
and efforts to understand UFOs. In 1877, the Italian astronomer
Giovanni
Schiaparelli observed narrow lines across the face of Mars and
designated
them canali, or channels.
In most English translations these
lines became ìcanals,î a name connoting an artificial
structure.
The canals in Schiaparelli's 1877 drawings did not look especially
artificial,
but some writers were quick to jump on the possibility and develop the
theme. Schiaparelli then made an even more amazing discovery while
observing
the planet in 1881-1882.
Over a period of days or even
hours,
some of the canals seem to ìdoubleîóthat is, where
one canal appeared before, two appeared in its place. These double
canals
were often thin, straight lines running sometimes for thousands of
miles
in perfect parallel. He realized the implications of this discovery and
published his results in an obscure Italian scientific journal, but to
no avail. The popular press soon spread these observations far and wide
as proof that Mars was home to intelligent beings capable of vast
engineering
projects.
Martian
ìcanalsî
as drawn
by Schiaparelli in 1886
The question of Mars
and
its canals
became the most exciting issue in astronomy. In 1894, the American
astronomer
Percival Lowell built his famous observatory on a site west of
Flagstaff
(in Arizona) which came to be known as ìMars Hill.î
He quickly became the most active
observer of the red planet and a vociferous publicist for the theory of
an inhabited Mars. Lowell rejected the earlier view of the planet as a
world with oceans linked by the canals, and proposed instead that Mars
was a dying planet. Its seas and thick atmosphere had departed with its
evolutionary youth. The remaining water was locked in the polar caps.
When
they melted in the spring their moisture revived the vegetation, which
appeared as dark gray or blue-green areas on the surface of Mars. The
melting
polar caps filled the canals with water, which was then distributed to
the ancient Martian cities that were stranded amid vast reddish
deserts.
The visible canals were not the waterways themselves but strips of
vegetation,
probably cultivated lands, over pipelines constructed to conserve the
precious
remaining water. In summer, when the polar runoff was greatest, the
Martians
opened a second canal to handle the overflow. According to Lowell, the
Martians were more advanced than us in science, technology, social
organization,
and physical evolution.
Other astronomers saw the canals
as nothing more than natural spots and shadings on the surface of Mars,
joined into long straight lines by deceptions of the human eye and the
will to believe. This controversy continued through the 1920s, with
most
astronomers persuaded that the canals were in fact optical illusions.
The
Mariner and Viking probes of the 1960s and 1970s ultimately bore out
this
explanation.
Canals were not the only Martian
mysteries suggesting intelligent life there. Bright spots observed on
the
planet around the turn of the century were interpreted by the popular
press
as signals, though Lowell and other astronmers scotched these rumors by
explaining them as clouds. A few decades later, a vast cloud shaped
like
a ìWî formed periodically over the same area of the
surface.
Again popular interest was excited, but again astronomers called on
natural
forces. During the 1920s several experimenters with radio, including
Guglielmo
Marconi and Nikola Tesla, believed they picked up radio signals from
Mars.
In 1937 a Japanese astronomer saw a brilliant spot suddenly appear on
the
surface,followed by a large cloud. This observation suggested a meteor
or volcanic eruption to astronomers in the 1930s; but by the 1950s, a
new
possibility was suggested: now the events fit the pattern of an atomic
explosion.
If no physical canals marked the
surface of Mars, their idea has left an indelible impression on
literature
and popular belief. In 1897, H. G. Wells drew on Lowellís theory
as the basis for his novel, The War of the Worlds, which assumed the
Martians
were intelligent enough to escape their dying planet and attempt a
migration
to Earth. This most famous alien invasion story provoked a major panic
when Orson Welles broadcast a radio version in October 1938. A survival
motive as the reason for extraterrestrials coming to Earth has appeared
in the UFO literature from time to time, and is prominent in current
speculations
about the purpose of abductions.
A Dweller on Two Planets (1899),
dictated by the Martian Phylos to Frederick S. Oliver by automatic
writing,
tells of Martians coming to Earth in aerial craft to visit Atlantis and
Lemuria, and prefigures the later ìancient astronautî
literature.
Theodore Fluornoy wrote From India to the Planet Mars (1900) describing
the visionary travels of a young woman who brought back an elaborate
description
of the Martian landscape and civilization, much like modern UFO
contactees.
Life-on-Mars beliefs intersected
with UFO reports from an early date. A report out of South America in
1877
alleged the discovery of a meteor containing the body of a being from
Mars.
Most 1897 airships were credited to an earthly inventor, but a minority
opinion blamed the airships on Martians coming to Earth on an
exploratory
mission.
Several landing yarns included
Martians,
such as a St. Louis man who visited with two humans who looked like
Adam
and Eve but indicated they came from Mars before flying off in their
airship;
and the Aurora, Texas, crash, where a local expert in astronomy looked
at the pilotís body and said he must have been a Martian.
Mars was still a viable candidate
for life in the 1950s, and many writers tied UFOs to that planet.
Gerald
Heard identified the UFOnauts as bee-like Martians in his book, Is
Another
World Watching? (1951). Some contactees claimed to have visited Mars or
met Martians; and hoaxer ìCedric Allinghamî gave away the
origin of his contact in the title, of his book, Flying Saucer from
Mars
(1955).
More serious UFOlogists discerned
a correspondence between 1950s UFO waves and oppositions of Mars,
though
from 1957 onward this relationship has broken down. A flurry of
excitement
began around 1960 when a Soviet scientist proposed that the moons of
Mars,
Deimos and Phobos, were artificial satellites. They seemed to behave
like
Sputnik. Moreover, they were not discovered until 1877, the same year
as
the canals, yet smaller telescopes could and should have detected these
bodies. A reasonable conclusion would be that they were launched just
prior
to 1877; therefore Mars is presently home to a native civilization
advanced
enough to launch huge space stations and send probes to Earth, or a
base
for visitors from beyond the solar system. Further understanding of
artificial
and natural satellite dynamics exploded this notion.
With the landing of the Viking Mars
probes in 1976, hope for life on the planet flickered out. Not even
simple
plant life or bacteria greeted the expeditions from Earth. Yet thanks
to
those probes, a new Martian controversy began over the so-called
ìFace
on Marsî: a formation found in some Viking photos with a
remarkable
resemblance to a human face. The surrounding formation have impressed
some
people as artificial and city-like, and led to speculations that an
ancient
civilization once inhabited the planet.
Alas, now yet another Martian myth
bites the dust. On April 5, 1998, the Mars Orbital Camera on the Mars
Global
Surveyor spacecraft photographed these features at different sun angles
and at ten times the resolution of the previous images. Even computer
enhancements
of the pictures show no resemblance to a ìfaceî or
anything
else, except randomly scattered rocks and hills of the natural Martian
landscape.
If present-day supporters of the
extraterrestrial hypothesis have had to look beyond the solar system
for
the origin of UFOs, the legacy of the life-on-Mars controversy has
accompanied
the search. Ideas of superior alien intellects with body forms
different
from ours were boosted into popular consciousness as never before by
scientific
and literary treatments of Mars. Notions of a dying planet and aliens
seeking
out the Earth for purposes of their own have persisted in UFO lore down
to the present.
óThomas Eddie Bullard
Mars rock Known technically as
sample
#ALH84001, this potato-sized Martian meteorite contains what most
scientists
believe is fossilized bacteria from the planet Mars.
In August of 1996, headlines
around the
world announced ìLife on Mars.î Though disputed by some
scientists,
most support the conclusion that this 4.2-lb. chunk of basalt does
indeed
contain the first evidence of life beyond the Earth.
The meteorite, discovered in
Antarctica
in 1984, is believed to have arrived on Earth between 11,000 and 13,000
years ago; probably the result of a comet or asteroid impact to the
planet
Mars some 16 or 17 million years before that. With the explosive force
of perhaps a million hydrogen bombs, the ejecta from the impact,
according
to this scenario, probably escaped the weak Martian gravity to assume
orbits
around the sun until encountering the Earth at the opportune point.
We know the rock is from Mars,
because
it contains chemical markersóknown from samples taken by the
Viking
landeróthat ìfingerprintî the Martian atmosphere.
The
conclusion that the rock contains a 3.6-billion-year-old life-form is
drawn
from four separate lines of evidence, which are highly technical in
nature.
There is strong evidence, as well,
that the early Mars had running water, and perhaps even oceans,
covering
much of its surface.
óRonald D. Story
Face on Mars
What we call the
ìFace on Marsî
is, according to Meier, only the tip of the artifact-iceberg of what
exists,
and will be one day found by man, on the now desolate planet. Meier
contends
that Mars was one of three planets in the solar system that have been
inhabited
by humans. The other planet (besides Mars and the Earth) was called
ìMalonaî
or ìMaldekî (its remnants now making up the asteroid
belt).
Meier predicts that the discovery of artifacts on Mars will shake the
foundations
of our understanding of mankindís origins.
The Space People who
contacted Howard
Menger originated on Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn and were making
contact
for the first time with a select group of earthlings. Some of the
earthlings
had a very special heritage unbeknownst to them until after their
meetings
with the Space People. Mr. Menger himself, for example, and his second
wife, Connie, were reincarnated from previous lives on the planet
Venus.
Venus, by the way, is described by Menger as ìÖyoung and
healthy,
with beautiful foliage, streams, forests, large bodies of water,
mountains,
hillsÖî and not unlike ìÖsome places in
California
todayÖ.î
Michel attended the
universities of
Aix, Grenoble, and Marseilles (1939-43), where he studied the theory of
sound, musical harmony, and various instruments. He earned his License
(similar to the master's degree) in philosophy and letters. He worked
at
the Short-Wave Service of National Radio Broadcasting (1944-58) and
with
the Research Service of the French Radio-Television Office (1958-75).
He
has been a writer specializing in the topic of animal communication
from
1954 to 1965, during which time he published several articles. Michel
has
also studied communication in the mystical community.
In UFOlogy, his involvement dates
from the postwar Scandinavian ghost rocket wave. His two books, The
Truth
About Flying Saucers (1954) and Flying Saucers and the Straight-Line
Mystery
(1958), have been very influential among students of the UFO
phenomenon,
both in Europe and the United States.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1955) is also revered by critics for its rich metaphor of the pod people. Technically, this is better as an example of the Capgras syndrome form of paranoia, but it is understandably lumped in with the pandemic of alien possession in fifties cinema: Invaders from Mars, It Came from Outer space, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Kronos, Beast With a Million Eyes, Enemy from Space, and so on.
Control by implant is found in Invaders from Mars, where the operation to insert it is utilized as a dramatic peril. It recurs in Battle in Outer Space, but here a strobing beam of light does the operation as the victim drives a car. After the radio control apparatus makes him a slave to the glorious planet Nehtal, he experiences a time loss and discovers a trickle of blood on his forehead. In Catwomen of the Moon a beam of light is alone the force of influence. In Earth vs. the Flying Saucers another beam of light makes the skull of a victim transparent while knowledge is sucked out. A cruder form of mindscan involving a TV monitor can be found in Invasion of the Star Creatures, a lame comedy. ZontaróThe Thing from Venus offers an amusing variant by some very unconvincing ëinjecto-pods,í vampire-bats with lobster tails that gain control when they bite you in the neck.
It should be emphasized that
influencing
machine fantasies and ideas of reference are defensive strategies to
retain
some measure of self-esteem against crazy thoughts and shameful
impulses
and actions. The individual does not want to call himself crazy and
blames
others for the unwanted situation he is in. Though a primary sign of
schizophrenia
because it indicates the mind is misbehaving and flooding the
consciousness
with primitive thought, loose associations, or blocking mechanisms, it
is also a sign of a positive prognosis. The mind is at least defending
itself and not passively giving in. It is in this sense, equally a sign
of normality. It is a defense potentially available for most people and
can be called upon for less challenging dilemmas than schizophrenic
episodes.
As we saw up front, fiction writers call them up frequently for
dramaturgical
purposes. They have license to use fantasy mechanisms and retain the
presumption
of normality. Some of the UFO cases cited earlier probably involved
psychotic
episodes and some are just stories. Either way, the presence of these
motifs
justifies the presumption of unreality unless very extraordinary proof
is marshaled against its likely impossibility.
Nearly every significant speculation in UFOlogical thought seems to be prefigured somewhere in the writings of Charles Fort; control fantasies being no exception. Sometime before writing the Book of the Damned, Fort wrote a book titled X that was organized on the idea that our civilization was controlled by certain rays emanating from Mars. The process was akin to the way images on photographic film are controlled by light rays. To the ìX,î Earth is a sensitive photographic plate and all of our reality is an artistic medium.
Monuments of Mars, The
(North Atlantic
Books, 1987). Science writer Richard Hoagland studied the 1976 Viking
photos
of Mars, depicting a human-like face in the Cydonia region, and
concluded
that extraterrestrial colonists once lived on Mars and created the
face,
a pyramid, and other huge structures that were left as reminders of
their
lost civilization. He believes there may be a connection between the
Cydonia
complex and the Giza plateau in Egypt with its Sphinx and pyramids,
which
seem to indicate that both ancient Sumer and Egypt took inspiration and
guidance from the Martian builders at Cydonia.
óRandall Fitzgerald
After Officer Jubinville arrived, the four went outside and spotted an object whose light seemingly went out when a flashlight was trained on it, and appeared to move slightly, occasionally changing colors. However, the multiwitness phase of the sighting should probably be ruled ambiguous and therefore nonsupportive of the Morel sighting because: (1) the object, as described by all four observers, matched the appearance and behavior of both the planet Mars and the UFO (the latter when seen at a distance); and (2) the planetís known position was too close to the UFOís estimated position to entirely dismiss the planet from contention. Other aspects of the case are, so far, unconfirmed and rest on the testimony of Mrs. Morel herself.