Public works on Mars
Peering through his telescope at Mars, American astronomer Percival Lowell was certain he spotted signs of intelligent life.
“That Mars is inhabited by beings of some sort or other we may consider as certain as it is uncertain what those beings may be,” as he famously wrote in 1906.
Lowell interpreted the strange patterns seen on the surface as a complex network of canals, which intelligent Martians used to irrigate their crops. Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli had reached a similar conclusion 30 years earlier. A bold interpretation, but Lowell, Schiaparelli, and others were fooled by an apparent optical illusion (or wishful thinking), as the dark markings on Mars were forged by natural geological processes.
