Life on Mars?

The recent landing of the newest Martian Rover (named Perseverance) on February 18, 2021 is truly amazing. The engineering resources deployed to reach this highly difficult goal are overwhelming. Perseverance has as one of its main tasks the finding possible traces of past or present life on Mars. There are several new and proven sensing, imaging, and analyzing devices on board, in addition to others of Mars-proven technologies. Congratulations to everyone who is involved with and contributes to this astounding feat. 

The picture shows a bleak, dry, and waterless landscape, unlikely to be very hospitable to life. But we have images of what appear to be momentary water flows on some Martian crater slopes. We know from past rovers that, in some areas, water ice is present close to the surface. That is a driving reason behind the plans to land people on Mars in future.

Perseverance on Mars (from Space.com)

This landing achievement, the activities planned for this most complex of Martian rovers, and the recent close opposition of Mars in our sky, made me think of a book my mother gave me in 1953, knowing my interest in astronomy. The book's contents address the idea that life of some kind exists everywhere in the universe. Its title is (translated from German) "What lives on the stars"; in it, the author Desiderius Papp describes the intense human fascination with extraterrestrial life during the period in the late 1920s. I had a look into that book again while writing this.

Humanity has for ages "populated" Mars (and the other planets, and some of their moons) with some type of life, usually at least equal, if not superior to us. In the later part of the 1920s a lot of people again speculated about the existence of extraterrestrial life on the planets of our solar system. The beginning of this period seems to have been based on the Mars drawings by the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who observed Mars for many years in the 1870's and beyond. Some of these drawings show thin lines, which he labelled "canali" (channels), later translated by others as "canals". 

Schiaparelli's visual images were produced using a modest telescope (by today's standards) at an Observatory in northern Italy, working near the limits of its capabilities. As a conscientious observer, he must have had some doubts about the lines he saw, asking himself whether they were optical illusions or real. Many other astronomers of renown never saw these channels. In the 1920's, on and after the 50th anniversary of Schiaparelli's publication of his drawings, the general public got excited over the idea that these supposed canals were the product of highly intelligent and accomplished beings, trying to save their existence by collecting the meltwater from Mars' icecaps; realizing that their planet was rapidly losing its water. 

One of Giovanni Schiaparelli's Mars maps (scienceclarified.com)

It seems that Schiaparelli never promoted those ideas himself (he died in 1910).  However, there were numerous people who expanded this concept, well-known scientists, poets, researchers, and authors of phantasy literature, comics etc., all contributed. One popular astronomer (Camille Flammarion) had no compunctions about stating that these canals were, without a doubt, the result of beings with immensely superior logic and capabilities. Flammarion and other people produced amazingly detailed maps of Mars and the canals, the location of supposedly large cities, possible transportation methods, plant life, many of these ideas amazingly anthropological. One well-known explorer of Mars (Percival Lowell, business man, mathematician, astronomer, author) used his own fortune to build a then state-of-the-art observatory in 1893-1894 at Flagstaff, Arizona, dedicated to the exploration of Mars. He died in 1916, but the Lowell Observatory is still in use today. The observatory's telescope was later used by Asaph Hall, in 1933, to find the then outermost planet in the solar system, Pluto. Hall was also the astronomer who found the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, in 1877, before the existence of the Lowell Observatory. 

We now know the topology of the Martian surface in reasonable detail. The landscape is indeed complex in many areas, and a number of hints point to the existence of rivers and lakes in the early history of Mars, with canyons and valleys in existence which, however, show no hint of artificial creation. Perhaps Schiaparelli got the first glimpses of something that looked a little like his canali, but we have seen no water canals built by some intelligent and logical beings.

I think that the events referred to above contributed to the path that lead to the efforts referenced at the beginning of this article. We are still looking for life forms that will confirm that we (that is, all life on Earth) are not alone in the universe. From the past and present data sent back by many of the orbiting Mars satellites, on-the-surface moving rovers, and fixed sensing stations, a life as fantasized above is not very likely. At the moment, though, we still cannot answer the questions: is there now or was there ever any life as we know it on Mars? Perhaps any life as we DON'T know it?