In recent years, the Mars orbiter and rover missions have shown that the Red Planet indeed once had abundant water. Though the surface of Mars today is too cold and dry to support known life-forms, there is evidence that liquid water may exist not far beneath the surface.
The odds are—once again—in favor of Mars once having had basic microbial life. But that is—unsurprisingly—not the scientific consensus. In order to settle the debate, a team of researchers at MIT and Harvard in 2011 developed an instrument that they hoped could provide the proof that life on Mars did once exist, and may have been responsible for life on planet Earth. The team of Christopher Carr and postdoctoral associate Clarissa Lui, working together with Maria Zuber, head of MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), and Gary Ruvkun, a molecular biologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, have created an instrument that should allow them to discover evidence of DNA or RNA. They have labeled their quest the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Genomes (SETG). Their instrument could take a sample of Martian soil from below the surface and process it to separate out any possible organisms and amplify their DNA or RNA, as well as use biochemical markers to search for signs of particular genetic sequences that are nearly universal among all known life-forms. Their hope is that, when it’s finished, their device will find a ride on a future exploration to the Red Planet.
If the device lifts off, it will become one of a very short list of instruments that have been sent to Mars to search for life. The first was launched in 1976 with the Viking Landers and produced ambiguous results. The most commonly accepted version of the 1976 tests is that they revealed no signs of life. But Gilbert Levin, the principal investigator of this project, felt that the conclusion was too quickly reached. In 1986, he reexamined the results and concluded that Viking may well have found evidence of microbial life on Mars.
One image from the Viking 2 Lander showed early morning frost at the landing site, offering further support that the planet once had water. But most importantly, one of the experiments was to detect metabolizing microorganisms. When the experiment was conducted on both the Viking Landers, it gave positive results! Yet despite the straightforward, positive result, the conclusions were debated away! Does anything more need to be said?
When probes landed on Mars, early experiments apparently showed that there was no life on the Red Planet. But since then, those results have been questioned. Together with evidence from meteorites, images like these, which show frost on the Martian surface in the morning, indicate Mars once was home to living organisms.
Alien Probes
Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe argues that after 1982, evidence for cosmic life and panspermia acquired a status close to irrefutable, but publication avenues that were hitherto readily available to its proponents became suddenly closed. He has gone on the record with his opinion that, after 1982, attitudes hardened to a point that panspermia and related issues were decreed taboo by all respectable journals and institutions. Nothing that challenged the scientific dogma of how life had originated on planet Earth could be published, in spite of the vast amount of scientific data showing that life did not originate here.
He adds, “Even though the general public reveled in ideas of extraterrestrial life, science was expected to shun this subject no matter how strong the evidence, albeit through a conspiracy of silence. It was an unwritten doctrine of science that extraterrestrial life could not exist in our immediate vicinity, or, that if such life did exist, it could not have a connection with Earth.”1 Wickramasinghe became evidence of this “conspiracy of silence” himself when in March 2010 he was dismissed from his post at Cardiff University’s Centre for Astrobiology, as funding was withdrawn from his department.
Wickramasinghe has gone far beyond the idea that life was seeded here on planet Earth; he argues that every day, alien life-forms enter our planet, in the form of flu viruses. He has found that outbreaks of the flu are often found to coincide with major meteor showers that sprinkle the Earth’s atmosphere with what is literally extraterrestrial material. Specifically, he believes that diseases such as the Spanish Flu virus actually rode to Earth from space on meteors, before it caused widespread death in 1918–20. Between 50 and 100 million people, or 8 to 16 percent of the world’s population, died from the Spanish Flu, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history: some 550 million people, or 32 percent, were infected. Worst affected was Western Samoa, where 90 percent of the population was infected, and one-third of adult men, one-fifth of adult women, and one tenth of all children were killed.
The lethal second wave covered almost the entire world in a very short period of time, suggesting that the speed at which it traveled was beyond a human carrier, and that the virus was literally seeded from space. Lau Weinstein observed that “Although person-to-person spread occurred in local areas, the disease appeared on the same day in widely separated parts of the world on the one hand, but, on the other, took days to weeks to spread relatively short distances.”2 The best evidence for its extraterrestrial delivery mechanism was that in the winter of 1918, the disease suddenly appeared in Alaska, in villages that had been isolated for several months.
Wickramasinghe also points to the Plague of Athens and the Plague of Justinian as two further examples of plagues that might have had alien origins. The Plague of Athens was a devastating epidemic that hit the Greek capital during the second year of the Peloponnesian War (430 BC). The cause of the plague remains unknown. The Plague of Justinian afflicted the Byzantine Empire, including its capital Constantinople, in the years AD 541–542. It was one of the greatest plagues in history. Wickramasinghe includes the more recent SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak as having potential extraterrestrial components. SARS created a near pandemic, between November 2002 and July 2003, with 8,422 known infected cases and 916 confirmed human deaths. Within a matter of weeks, SARS had spread from the Hong Kong province of China to 37 countries around the world. Microbes have been identified in the upper atmosphere, and though it is known that storms, monsoons, and volcanic activity can transport them to these regions, the mesosphere is also the first region where meteors begin to fragment.
The evidence accumulated so far suggests that the worst flu epidemics coincide with peaks in the 11-year cycle of sunspot activity, and this was once again the case in 2000. Removing Wickramasinghe from his position has not helped him find more evidence for this possibility. He points out that as much as a ton of bacterial material might fall to Earth from space daily, which translates into some 1,019 bacteria, or 20,000 bacteria per square meter of the Earth’s surface. This is an astonishing amount of material. Most of it simply adds to the unculturable or uncultured microbial flora present on Earth. But in some cases, this bacterial material turns against nature, and leads to death and destruction. Just as life came from elsewhere, death, too, is sometimes an alien invader.
Wickramasinghe also argues that our ancestors drew the same conclusions he has drawn. Ancient Chinese astronomers chronicled numerous episodes when the apparition of comets preceded plague and disaster. The Mawangdui Silk, compiled in 300 BC, details 29 different cometary forms and the various disasters associated with them, dating as far back as 1500 BC. Wickramasinghe concludes, “All ancient civilizations, without exception, have looked upon comets with a sense of trepidation and awe. Comets were considered to be harbingers of doom, disease, and death, infecting men with a blood lust to war, contaminating crops, and dispersing disease and plague.... The views of ancient civilizations—the Chinese, Egyptians and Indians—that laid the foundations of philosophy and science, including astronomy, should not be so easily dismissed.”3 And so we have almost come full circle, for it was with the original proponent of panspermia that we saw the drive to remove mythology from “the scientific approach.” The current billboard of the theory of panspermia is suggesting we once again allow legends, myths, and ancient accounts to be included in the debate.
&n
bsp; The big question, of course, is whether life is a cosmic imperative, which would mean that the Bible and so many other religious texts are likely true when they say that God created life. And even though the Universe created life, was God helped by “gods”—extraterrestrial beings—who assisted the Creator by sending life throughout the universe, making this not only a scientific, but a religious mission, to help create life everywhere?
The debate as to whether such alien probes were ever sent out normally focuses on the so-called von Neumann probes, named after Hungarian physicist John von Neumann, who wrote about self-replicating machines. In the realm of space exploration, such probes would use the raw material of the galaxy they’re exploring to make copies of themselves, which would then head off elsewhere into space to collect more data. (The monolith of Stanley Kubrick’s epic film 2001: A Space Odyssey was actually a von Neumann probe. The film was meant to start with scientists explaining how von Neumann probes were the most efficient method of space exploration, but Kubrick cut the opening segment from his film.) Many people believe that such self-replicating—or von Neumann—probes would be the most efficient means of space exploration.
We have sent a number of manned missions into space, but we know that our efforts could best be described as a cumbersome exercise. With our very basic space-traveling technology, we know that in order to go farther, we can, at the moment, only rely on robots, which are easier to send across longer distance. Still, robots are extremely limited when it comes to deep-space exploration. For that, what is required are machines that are able to make copies of themselves, as they progress on their voyage of discovery—in other words, seeding. The smaller the self-replicating machines, the easier they would be to deliver. As it happens, the best piece of “nanotechnology” that we have on planet Earth is DNA.
The Case for Mars
Was there ever life on Mars? NASA communications expert Maurice Chatelain was one of several people who believe that the pyramids that grace so many ancient monuments are an extraterrestrial legacy. From the late 1970s onwards, their camp has focused on finding clear evidence of artificial constructions elsewhere in the solar system, as this would seriously strengthen their argument.
The best candidate for housing an ancient civilization is Mars. The expression “little green men from Mars” is part of our daily vocabulary. In 1974, the magazine Icarus ran a short article by Mack Gipson, Jr., and Victor K. Ablordeppy, which reported that “triangular and pyramid-like structures have been observed on the Martian surface.” The discovery was made in the Elysium Quadrangle of the Red Planet. The authors noted that these structures cast triangular and polygonal shadows, suggesting a pyramidal structure. Still, the authors seemed to favor a natural explanation, as “steep-sided volcanic cones and impact craters occur only a few kilometers away.” The four pyramids were paired, facing each other across a plain.
Leading American astronomer Carl Sagan decided to comment on these structures in 1977, initially innocently writing that “the largest are three kilometers across at the base and one kilometer high.” He made a comparison to artificial structures on Earth: “...much larger than the pyramids of Sumer, Egypt or Mexico on Earth. They seem to be eroded and ancient and are, perhaps, only small mountains, sandblasted for ages. But they warrant, I think, a careful look.”4 That was all that was needed to create controversy and generate speculation. In 1996, Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock abandoned their usual exploration of the Egyptian and Mexican pyramids and devoted an entire book to the Martian anomalies. They wondered, “Could they be the first sign, as many independent researchers claim, that Mars is marked by the ‘fingerprints’ of an ancient extraterrestrial civilization?”5
The shape of this Martian debate transformed when an area of the Martian Cydonia region was photographed by the Viking 1 space probe, on July 25, 1976. When the photographs were later analyzed by NASA, people saw an area approximately 2 miles long and 1 mile across that seemed to resemble a human face. NASA—for some reason that, in retrospect, should be classified as unwise—decided to announce this “quirk of nature” in a press release six days later. Despite the humoristic tone that NASA tried but perhaps failed to convey in the news release, some people wondered whether it could indeed represent an artificial monument.
In July 1976, the Viking space probe photographed something the camera suggested to be a face. For many years to come, until NASA sent another space probe to Mars and re-imaged that region, this image led to enormous speculation that a Martian civilization had been discovered.
The most notable advocate of this theory became the American journalist Richard Hoagland. In his 1987 book, The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever, Hoagland interpreted other nearby surface features as remnants of a ruined city and artificially constructed pyramids. In short, he argued for the artificiality of the so-called Face on Mars by arguing that other nearby structures could likely be artificial, too. Bauval and Hancock’s The Mars Mystery was largely a repetition of Hoagland’s theory, but brought it to a wider audience, riding high on both authors’ recent best-sellers. Hoagland, Hancock, and Bauval each drew a parallel between the Martian structures and the pyramids of Earth—specifically the Great Pyramid—thus convincing many that there was a connection between the two structures; namely, that there was an alien component to the Great Pyramid.
As quickly as the Martian Face became popular, it disappeared. The Mars Global Surveyor probe in 1998 and 2001, and the Mars Odyssey probe in 2002 photographed the “Face” under completely different lighting than the Viking probe had in 1976, and at much higher resolution. The new photographs made the structure now look very little like a face, although for some observers, this was “clear proof” either that the images had been doctored, or that, in fact, Earth’s powers (the United States of America?) had bombed the Martian surface somewhere between 1976 and 1998 to destroy evidence of the extraterrestrial civilization.
The obliteration of the Face on Mars also killed the interest in Martian pyramids, even though they continue to rule certain conspiracy-loving corners of the Internet. So what to make of the Martian pyramids? We only have—and perhaps only ever will have—photographic evidence at our disposal. These are the same photographs that convinced some that there was a face. Even skeptics saw the face; they just felt it was a natural anomaly, a trick of light, or a photographic illusion—or a combination of all three. When it comes to seeing the pyramids, many observe that, unlike the Face, these structures do not seem to have withstood the test of time. Those claiming that there is clear evidence of a pyramid on the Martian surface argue that the pyramids are partially destroyed—which makes them, in my opinion, extremely difficult to maintain as “clear evidence,” for a heap of rubble or a natural hill are difficult enough to distinguish when you are in front of them, let alone when seeing them from miles up in the sky.
Hoagland and a Russian author, Vladimir Avinsky, both wrote about pyramidal hills in the Cydonia region, but what for one was a clear pyramid was not seen as such by the other. Of all contenders for the honor of being named a Martian pyramid, the most famous is the so-called D&M Pyramid, which actually looks nothing like a pyramid, if only because it has a pentagram as its ground plan. (Not a single pentagram-based pyramid has ever been discovered on Earth.) The name of this pyramid derived from its discoverers, Vincent DiPietro and Gregory Molenaar, computer scientists working at the Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington, D.C. Adding to the pyramid’s fame was its relative proximity to the Face (10 miles) and the fact that it was almost aligned perfectly north–south, like the Great Pyramid of Egypt. The pyramid was massive: almost 1 mile on its shortest side and 2 miles on its long axis, and half a mile high—roughly five times the height of the Great Pyramid. This seems to be not a structure built by hands, but with elaborate machines—as our extraterrestrial neighbors would have had. But if these pyramids were indeed built by the same people who built pyramids on Earth (as most of these authors, Hoagland foremost, argued)
, why do we not see such gigantic pyramids on Earth? I would find it grossly unfair that alien visitors build gigantic pyramids on Mars, but only big pyramids on Earth...
Anyway, no one was debating whether there was something there, but was it (a) five-sided, (b) a pyramid, and (c) artificial? Neglecting these questions, Hoagland and others felt that pointing out other anomalies or regular shapes on the photographs strengthened their case. They then draw lines between the various structures and concluded that, together, they proved the presence of a city. Hoagland even identified a city square in this complex.
In the final analysis, it is impossible to argue that there are no pyramids on Mars—it’s impossible to prove a negative. But it is equally clear that any analysis purely based on aerial photography, as has been proven both on Earth and in the case of the Face on Mars, is highly tenuous. As to the D&M Pyramid, it is most likely a natural hill, seeing as it doesn’t really look like a pentagram when you look at it without Hoagland’s white-line pentagram drawn on top. But the debate of Martian pyramids will only ever be answered when humans mount an archaeological expedition to the Red Planet, and so it may linger for many decades to come.
Before returning back to Earth, let us quickly note that the moon also has had its fair share of extraterrestrial pyramid fever. A pyramidal structure was seen in the Sea of Tranquility by Soviet space engineer Alexander Abramov, who claimed that it was positioned exactly like the pyramids at Giza. The area was the very region the astronauts of Apollo 11 landed in on the first trip to the moon in July 1969. In my humble opinion, the article may have been solely intended to create controversy—a piece of Soviet propaganda to argue that perhaps the Americans were hiding a major discovery from humankind. Several Americans have added to this speculation, including Fred Steckling, whom we single out for arguing that his photographic analysis had revealed possible pyramids in various craters; one image had been shot by the Apollo 8 mission, the other during the Apollo 16 mission. These are indeed all anomalies on photographs, but they are at best indications of anomalies on the ground, and nothing more, until we go back to the moon and do an on-site inspection.
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