Recently, the US Aerospace Agency (NASA) has published yet another sensational pictures taken by the Curiosity rover. On them you can see a strange glow, as if escaping from the Martian interior to the surface.
MARSIAN PARADOXES
Astronomers believe that this phenomenon is natural, natural and is nothing more than sun glare reflected from the rocky surface. And enthusiasts of the search for extraterrestrial life, recalling the strange lights and flares on the Red Planet, observed earlier, insist that another proof of the existence of life on Mars has been found.
After NASA experts put forward a version of a camera defect, renowned ufologist Scott Waring announced a new Martian "conspiracy theory". In his opinion, NASA specialists deliberately withhold information about all the unusual phenomena observed by the Martian missions, distort the data and destroy information about Martian artifacts and UFOs.
The strange glow recorded in the pictures is far from the first known Martian anomaly. Here one can recall the "face of the sphinx" or "turtles", "iguanas" and even the "Martians" themselves, whose frozen images are clearly visible on the debris of the Martian rocks.
People have always shown interest in the mysterious Red Planet. In the century before last, astronomers Giovanni Schiaparelli, Percival Lowell, and Eugene Antoniadi declared that Mars was covered with canals. And in the middle of the last century, scientists noticed strange seasonal changes in the color of the "Martian channels" and a series of rare flares on the planet's surface. By this time, the space era had come on Earth, and numerous automatic interplanetary stations (AMS) rushed to Mars. The images of the Martian surface made by the latest equipment aroused great interest among ufologists, who first saw then the notorious "face of the sphinx", and the figure of a "seated humanoid", and a "monolith" with "caves" …
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LEGEND ABOUT CHANNELS
In 1877, during the great opposition of Mars, the Italian astronomer J. Schiaparelli discovered on the surface of the dark Martian "land" what he called "canali". In the Italian language this word has many meanings - from the strait to the gutter, but it was the “canals” that got into the English translation as artificial irrigation structures. Schiaparelli himself did not put a similar meaning in these Martian formations. The Italian astronomer mapped the hemispheres of Mars, on which he drew a grid of thin straight lines of 113 channels connecting the dark spots of the seas.
For many years Schiaparelli observed periodic "floods" and "split" channels. It was only after the great opposition of Mars in 1892 that he decided that the canals were artificially created. At the same time, the American astronomer W. Pickering announced the Martian "oases" at the confluence of the channels.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries. another American astronomer, P. Lovell, took up the study of Mars. He compiled a globe of Mars and wrote a number of scientific papers in which he provided evidence of the artificial origin of the "Martian channels". From which it was concluded that there is highly organized life on Mars.
Lovell's fantasies received unexpected support from the outstanding Russian astronomer G. A. Tikhov. During the great opposition of Mars in 1909, the staff of the Pulkovo Observatory found that the Martian polar caps have a greenish tint and resemble ice in appearance. Based on this, Professor Tikhov suggested that the polar caps melt in spring, causing the darkening of the "channels" and "seas" from the poles to the equator. In addition, he believed that the surface of Mars is covered with vegetation, which, when the ice melts, flourishes along the Martian channels.
Simultaneously with Lovell, Mars was explored by the Frenchman E. M. Antoniadi and the British E. W. Maunder. They compiled more detailed maps, which showed that the Martian channels were just an optical illusion. Antoniadi argued that groups of some kind of dark spots are mistaken for channels, and most likely these are giant faults and canyons. Even after the great confrontation of 1924, scientists did not come to a common opinion about the channels of the Red Planet. At the same time, European scientists tended to the hypothesis of Antoniadi and Maunder, while the American ones supported Lovell.
The very first expeditions of the AMS to the Red Planet completely dispelled the myth about the Martian channels. It turned out that the rocky surface of the planet was almost entirely covered with craters, the chains of which coincided with the lines of the channels indicated on the maps, and what was taken for oases were in fact larger craters. In addition, giant canyons have been discovered with reef valleys and meandering tributaries that resemble terrestrial riverbeds.
Today, when almost no one believes in the existence of life on Mars, scientists are looking for at least some signs that intelligent beings lived on the Red Planet in the distant past. Such a find would be a tremendous success for world science.
Traces of life
Today we can well imagine how, somewhere around 365 million kilometers from Earth, a strange six-wheeled vehicle the size of an average SUV slowly but persistently climbs an exposed layer of dry cracked rock covered with reddish-brown sand. Stopping on a hillock beneath kilometer-long cliffs piercing a dirty yellow sky hiding the pitiful remnants of a once-dense atmosphere, he turns a metal turret, surveying with multiple lenses the area called Yellow Knife Bay in Gale Crater. The mechanism then sets in motion an articulated arm, at the end of which a drilling device gleams. Having penetrated a few centimeters into the soil, the iron hand in a couple of minutes retrieves from the well a small container filled with gray powder. A special crane then sends the samples through a narrow opening into the body. Thus, the gray powder enters the laboratory cell, where it undergoes various analyzes, the results of which are broadcast to the monitors of the NASA Mars Mission Control Center in the form of long columns of numbers and symbols. Having deciphered the data, planetary experts determine that the sample contains a special type of clay - smectite, which on our planet can be found on swampy plains, abundantly washed by monsoon downpours.that the sample contains a special type of clay - smectite, which on our planet can be found on swampy plains, abundantly washed by monsoon showers.that the sample contains a special type of clay - smectite, which on our planet can be found on swampy plains, abundantly washed by monsoon showers.
As it turned out, ancient clay also contains traces of compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur. All these elements are part of organic compounds that make up the entire earth's protein-hydrogen life.
So, one can be convinced of the reality of the Martian artifacts only with the help of detailed soil samples, which have preserved traces of a hypothetical Martian civilization. Over time, many have found a completely scientific and natural explanation, but some questions still remain. Many of them relate to organics of Martian origin, as if found in soil samples in the area of the Yellowknife Bay geological outcrop. The material collected there is in all respects similar to the bottom sediments of an ancient lake. By the way, researchers estimate the time of its "life" at thousands of years, that is, we are talking about the long existence of large masses of water on the surface of ancient Mars. From now on, it can be considered proven.
It is difficult to say what the creatures that inhabited Mars were - bacteria, mosses or lichens, but one thing is clear - for the first time outside the Earth, a place has been found where some life could really exist …
The further the Martian missions deepen into the sand dunes and rocky plateaus of the Red Planet, the more insistent the questions of specialists, enthusiasts and ufologists sound: how to unravel the mystery of life, and at the same time, mysterious artifacts on the surface of the Red Planet? Why so far we have not met not only living aliens, but also their traces?
Any astronaut with a certain set of equipment could provide answers to these and many other accumulated questions, but, apparently, people will not land on Mars anytime soon. In the meantime, the next NASA rover can only record more and more mysterious artifacts and phenomena.
Oleg FAYG