Final Project

Rupa P.

Legislator:  Teel Bivins, Senator

Curiosity is one of many human natures that leads to discovery of the truth.  For that which man can not explain has been explained by storytellers.  Myths and science fiction seem to explain all of man’s misconceptions of space or hypothesis the possibilities of space.  If you once believed in the man in the moon or the moon is made of cheese this concept is easy to understand.  Many civilizations, including are own, have “focused their attentions on a strange reddish object that didn’t seem to follow the laws of the heavens.”  They have made many stories to explain the planet Mars. 

Mars’s unique color attracted most of the attention of the ancient people.  The unusual movement of Mars also made it unique.  All the other planets appeared to be moving in a constant direction with the constellations of the zodiac.  Mars broke the norm by moving one direction for months at a time and then suddenly start moving in the opposite direction.  This “backward traveler” to the Egyptians soon was associated to the god of war.  The Greeks recognized the inconstant movement as an act of distrust and disorder.  The red planet was soon named Ares after the god of war because was the ultimate act of distrust and disorder.  The Romans renamed it Mars, their name for Ares.

From their studies of the sky, the Greeks concluded that the Earth is the center of a perfectly symmetrical universe.  Eudoxus, a mathematician and astronomer, proposed the theory, but the theory began to lose its accuracy with further observations of the night sky.  Aristotle tried to save the theory with new observations, but he could not answer all the questions.  The theory was able to survive to the Renaissance era  that marked the dawning of modern astronomy was by the help of Ptolemy in Alexandria.  Ptolemy used epicycles and eccentrics or curves to explain the solar system.  With evidence in the Bible, the Roman Catholic Church embraced the theory.  Anyone who refutes the theory was considered a heretic.  Even with the danger of being labeled a heretic, many found the flaw of Eudxus’s theory.  Aristarchus, a third century BC astronomer, observed that the sun was bigger than the Earth during a lunar eclipse by watching the shadow of the Earth. He concluded the sun must be the center of the universe simply because it is bigger than the Earth.  Aristarchus was labeled a heretic.  On his deathbed, Copernicus published a book dedicated to Pope Paul III that explained why the sun is the center of the universe.  The only plausible conclusion of his observation began the process of throwing out Eudoxus’s earlier theory.  How does Mars play in this confusion about the center of the universe?  Though Copernicus answered some of problems of Eudoxus, he did not explain the anomalous movement of Mars.  Brache, a Danish astronomer, set out to correct the problems of Copernicus’s theory.  He invited Kepler to calculate a new orbit for Mars.  Mars was chosen because of its strange and yet unexplained movement.  Calculating Mars’s orbit was a laborious ordeal.  Kepler attempted to calculate the movement of Earth from Mars and then the movement of Mars from the sun.  In 1609 he announced that Mars has an elliptical orbit rather than a circular one.   To sum up his first two laws of motion, the planets travel in a elliptical orbit around the sun traveling faster when closer to the sun and slower when away from the sun.  These conclusions drawn from observations of Mars supported Copernicus’s theory.  Galileo’s observations also supported Copernicus’s theory.  Galileo put lenses on each end of a wooden tube to make the first telescope.  This telescope allowed him to see the heavenly bodies 21 times larger than looking at them with the naked eye.  With this telescope he was able to see that the diameter of Mars, as well as Venus, varies.  Galileo finally disproved the Ptolemaic system, but he went on trial before the church in 1633.  To escape the condemnation of being a heretic, Galileo renounced his theory.  Despite his actions, his theory continued to spread.  The Earth was no longer considered the center of the universe.

The birth of science fiction spread ideas to masses.  Kepler wrote what he envisioned a journey to the moon would be like in Somnium.  Many writers started writing their version of a journey to the moon, but soon their attentions turned to Mars.  The lack of true information about Mars allowed the authors’ imaginations to run freely.  Soon public opinion wanted to find life on Mars or find that Mars to be similar to Earth.  Scientist soon fed this hunger by Schiaparelli in 1877.Schiaparelli believed he had discovered canals on the Martian surface.  The Martian canals provided evidence of a highly developed society because only a highly developed society could have developed such a complex system of canals.  Lowell in 1896 found the same Martian canals at the Lowell observatory in Arizona.  He believed these canals carried water from the ice caps and that the water was used for irrigation.  Missions to Mars will later disprove the idea of the Martian canal. 

H.G. Wells wrote about Martians who seeked to come and take control of Earth in The War of the Worlds.  Besides being a good book, it is best known after a 1938 broadcast of an adaptation of the book into a radio play.  A 23-year-old actor by the name of Orson Welles started the play with a narration that made it clear to the listening public that they were about to hear a play.  At the same time as the play, another popular radio program is aired.  The majority of the radio public listened to that show and change to Welles’s station during the singer.  This time they changed station to hear Welles warning the public of the Martian attack.  The public went into public.  The New York Times received 875 calls from scared individuals.  The people started fleeing from their home.  After the program finished, CBS ran disclaimers to quiet to public and Welles held a press conference to deny the Martian attack.  Besides the sensation of this incidence, the play showed how willing the American public was of accepting intelligent life on Mars. 

Wells was not the only author of a science fiction novel about Mars.  Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, wrote a series of books about Mars.  The first of the eleven books was called A Princess of Mars.  The books were about the adventures of John Carter.  Carter and his family and friends go to Mars to fight the evil.  Interestingly, Carter reaches Mars by going to an open field, spreading his arms out and wishing to go to Mars.  Bradbury wrote The Martian Chronicles in the 1950’s.  The Martian Chronicles is considered the best book on Mars ever.  The romance of Bradbury’s book influenced Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Clarke also wrote The Sands of Mars.   In this book, Clarke wrote about changing the cold, dry terrain of Mars into a place suitable for human habitation.

Last Updated: 09/07/01