NASA: Mars hoax is a joke

June 11, 2009|By Peter Mucha, Inquirer Staff Writer
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  • The "Happy Face Crater" was photographed by a Mars orbiter in 1999.
The "Happy Face Crater" was photographed by a Mars orbiter in 1999. (Peter Mucha )
  • The "Happy Face Crater" was photographed by a Mars orbiter in 1999. (Peter Mucha )
  • The famous Face on Mars (upper right), photographed in 1976, looks a lot less human in higher-resolution photographs, like the larger one here, that have been sent back since 1999. (Peter Mucha )
  • Like the Face on Mars, the canals proved to be an illusion. From the late 1800s into the 20th century, people wondered if Mars had features created by an intelligent civilization. (Peter Mucha )
  • Another major Martian tease: Did fossils of microbes arrive on a meteorite from Mars that landed in Antarctica? In 1996, NASA backed that idea, but many scientists have grown more skeptical over the years that the tiny formations are from any living things. At left, the famous meteorite, ALH84001, under a microscope at the Johnson Space Center in Houston in 1996. At right, the structures that were allegedly organic in origin. (Peter Mucha )
  • "Only in Photoshop does Mars appear as large as a full Moon," reads the caption to this illustration from a NASA news release. Not only won't Mars appear big on Aug. 27, it won't even be visible in the night sky. (Peter Mucha )

Venus was the goddess of love, but Mars is the big cosmic tease.

No, the Red Planet will not appear as big as the full moon on Aug. 27.

Not even close.

Unless your flying saucer is parked a sun's diameter or two from its fourth planet.

Sillier still, Mars will not even be visible at night on that date.

So do not, NASA advises, believe "The Confusing-Email-About-Mars-You-Should-Delete-and-Not-Forward-to-Anyone-Except-Your-In-Laws."

Really, that was NASA's term.

Glad to know our well-endowed space program invents more than rocket fuel.

Anway, not even in 2003, when Mars was at its closest pass in 60,000 years, was it more than a rusty dot in the sky.

Story continues below.

That's when the "Mars Misunderstanding" began, NASA says.

Especially when folks left off the part that said Mars would look moonlike if magnified 75 times by a telescope.

And even that's a goof, NASA alleges, because peering through a tube just isn't the same as using naked eyes to view the open sky.

Mars sure a rich history of fooling folks.

Canals! It has canals! Are they a sign of irrigating life?

Astronomer Percival Lowell championed the ditch-digger theory around the turn of the 20th century.

Alas, the "canals" were mostly a sign of really weak telescopes.

In 1938, Martians landed in New Jersey! America was under attack!At least that's what Orson Welles led thousands to believe with his infamous War of the Worlds Mischief Night radio show.

 

In 1976, the Viking 1 probe photographed a two-mile-wide "human face" on Mars!

The photo did suggest a giant mask.

But in 2001, NASA took better pictures, and the hilly feature looks more like, well, a hilly feature with cracks. Not eye sockets.

But NASA did find a crater that looks like a Smiley Face!

Maybe that's another sign.

A sign that Mars is laughing at us.

Contact staff writer Peter Mucha at 215-854-4342 or pmucha@phillynews.com.

 

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