Page 38 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - March 2012
P. 38
Myths About Mars Myths About Mars by Bob “The Space Guru” Jones The Martians aren’t coming! The Martians aren’t coming! Uh-oh. You’ve learned everything you know about Mars from old science fiction books, half- heard reports on CNN, and those Warner Bros. cartoons starring Marvin the Martian. Well, hold onto your Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator because, as it turns out, most of what you know about Mars - or what you think you know - is probably a little off base. We’re here to correct that, with the following myths about Mars - and the real facts behind the myths. MYTH #1: Mars is the closest planet to Earth. Mars Reality #1: Well sometimes it is, but on average, Venus is the closest planet to Earth. Venus orbits the Sun at an average distance of 67.2 million miles (108.1 million km), while the Earth is parked at 93 million miles (129 million km) and Mars is out there at 141 million miles (226 million km) . Pull our your handy Antarctica remove 99 percent of the air from the Cydonia region of Mars. The Mesa looked calculator, and you’ll see that at it’s closest atmosphere - because Mars’s atmospheric disturbingly like an actual human face - a face approach, Venus is about 25 million miles (40 pressure at the surface is just one percent of two miles (3 km) long, that is. Since then, “the million km) from Earth, while Mars`s closest what Earth’s is. Not that you could use it face” has been a popular pop culture icon and approach is something like 48 million miles (77 anyway, since 95 percent of Mars’s atmosphere was even featured in the really terrible 2000 million km). (Mars can actually get closer is carbon dioxide, which you can’t breathe. flick Mission to Mars (in which it really was a thanks to its highly eccentric orbit, but never as Finally, should you ever land on Mars, you’d be face left there by old, dead Martians). But don’t close as Venus.) When Mars is on the far side of millions upon millions of miles from the nearest get too excited. In 2001, the Mars Global its orbit from Earth, it’s so far away that two 7-11, McDonald’s or Tim Horton’s. Elton John Surveyor took a finely detailed picture of the planets are actually closer to us: Venus and tiny got it right when he said,” Mars ain’t the kind of “face” - and this time it looked like - well, a big Mercury, which orbits the Sun at a distance of a place to raise your kids.” He should know; he’s pile fo rocks, which is exactly what it is. The mere 36 million miles (58 million km). In other the Rocket Man. “face” on the mesa is really nothing nore than a words, schlepping to Mars won’t be just like combination of shadows and poor imaging going down to the corner store. MARS MYTH #4: Mars’s surface is covered resolution of the camera attached to the Viking I with canals. spacecraft. There’s also a crater called Galle on MARS MYTH #2: Mars is the planet most Mars Reality #4: Nope. The idea of Martian Mars that looks like a “happy face.” Evidence of like Earth. canals got its start with American astronomer a very cheerful, ancient civilization? Probably Mars Reality #2: This depends on what you Percival Lowell, who in the late 19th century not. mean by “most like Earth.” It’s most like Earth mistranslated comments from an Italian in its surface features and weather, in its annual astronomer about the possibility of huge canali, MARS MYTH #6: The Martians sabotaged temperature range, its axial tilt, and its length of of “channels,” on the surface of Mars. Lowell our spacecraft to we wouldn’t find out about day (which is about 24 and a half hours long). thought that canali meant “canals” - artificial them. But then other planets start intruding in the structures made by advanced, intelligent Mars Reality #6: Yeah, that’s it! The spacecraft comparison. In terms of actual size, Venus is creatures - rather than naturally occurring in question would be 1999’s ill-fated Mars closer to Earth’s size than Mars. With a radius of channels, which was the original idea. The Climate Orbiter and Polar Lander spacecraft, 7,500 miles (12,070 km), Venus is just 400 existence of the canals, which was the original both of which bit the big one after arriving at miles (644 km), smaller in diameter than Earth; idea. The existence fo the canals was hotly Mars. As interesting as it would be to say that Mars has a diameter of a mere 4,200 miles debated for decades, until a visit from the these spacecraft were knocked out of the sky by (6,759 km). Venus is also closer in terms of Mariner spacecraft in the 1960s proved without Marvin the Martian and his pals taking a little gravitational pull - on Venus you’d weigh 91 a doubt that no canals (or channels, for that target practice, the fact is that both missions percent of what you do on Earth, while on Mars matter), existed at all - and there was no sigh of failed because of screwups back on Earth. The you’d weigh just 38 percent as much. Saturn, other intelligent life on Mars. So that was that. former spacecraft burned up in Mars’s Uranus, and Neptune also have similar However, the canals still pop up from atmosphere, the latter went plummeting to the gravitational pulls to Earth. In terms of water, time to time. They’re featured in popular surface. [] the planet that is most like Earth is Jupiter’s science fiction books by Ray Bradbury and moon Europa, which scientists think may have Robert Heinlein (both wrote many of their an ocean of liquid water hidden beneath a books before the question was settled). They massive covering of ice. So while Mars is like were even a minor plot in the 1996 movie Mars Earth in some ways, in many other ways it’s not. Attacks! By 1996 the filmmakers should have known better, but then it was a movie about MARS MYTH #3: Mars is easily habitable Martians attacking Earth, so you can’t beat them by man. for not being factually correct. Mars Reality #3: If you want to know what living on Mars is like, here is what you do. First, MARS MYTH #5: NASA spacecraft spotted move to Antarctica, because that’s how cold it si a face on Mars, evidence of an ancient on Mars: The average temperature is nastily advanced society. cold -85 degrees Fahrenheit (-65 degrees Mars Reality #5: The famous “face on Mars” Celsius). Now, once you’ve moved to was discovered in 1976 when NASA spacecraft Viking I snapped a picture of mesa in the
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