Dead desert
The twin planet rovers Spirit and Opportunity, which are more like washing machines than space explorers, arrived on Mars to study the planet's geological life in 2004. Transmitting valuable data and photographs to the abandoned Earth, the compact laborious robots sent by Russian scientists on a research mission have functioned there for several years. The information received proved that in the past the studied planet was distinguished by a completely tolerable climate and an abundance of water. The lack of heat from the distant Sun was compensated by hot geysers warming the air. And if not for a catastrophe on a planetary scale, as a result of which Mars lost its atmosphere, it is possible that to this day it would be filled with various forms of organic life.
Today Mars is a dead cold piece of space solid, dazzling with craters, but endowed with an abundance of minerals. On the surface of this icy desert, Martian tornadoes are raging - natural phenomena that scientists have dubbed "sand devils." The view of the neighboring Earth from this area of space looks quite nice. And in the sky are floating Martian clouds, which are so similar to our terrestrial, familiar, despite the difference in the density and composition of the atmosphere.
From the hot luminary of the solar system, this planet is located one and a half times farther away from the warm, native Earth. And the harsh climate of Mars is due to the lack of ozone protection, which prevents the reflection and spread of heat. For this reason, even in a favorable summer period, the soil surface in the "hot" tropics never heats up to a plus temperature. Photos of Mars, obtained from orbiting American satellites, allowed scientists to put forward a version of the existence of oceans and seas on the planet in the past, which are now frozen. Their contours are still clearly visible in photographs from space, like the Martian plains, as well as dried up dead rivers, mountain systems and numerous meteorite craters, sometimes comparable in size to a huge city.
Fear, Horror, Death
This mysterious planet, capturing the attention of earthlings since time immemorial, received its sonorous name in honor of the god of war for the bloody shade of light reflected from Mars. As it turned out, its surface in abundance is endowed with deposits of iron oxide, it is for this reason that earthly observers, looking at the sky, see a red glow.
The conjecture that the "bloody" planet has two satellites belongs to Johannes Kepler. Later, astronomer Asaf Hopp christened them "Fear" and "Horror", not at all because these small distant objects seemed to him somehow gloomy. Just that was the name, according to the ancient Greeks, of the sons of the warlike Mars. This is how the satellites got their name: Phobos and Deimos. But no one at that time knew how symbolic it was.
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A curious feature of these cosmic formations, which cannot even be called planets, since they are devoid of rounded shapes, resembling more cobblestones, is the negligible distance separating them from Mars. It is tens of times less than the length of the imaginary line connecting our planet with its satellite. The strange-looking “children” seem to huddle up to the “father”, while rapidly rotating around him, at a speed that allows them to make one revolution in just a certain number of hours.
The irregularity of the shape of the satellites of Mars suggests their asteroid origin. These two cosmic stones did not form naturally, like moons, but simply, at a certain time, were captured by gravity, falling into the gravitational field of a massive body. Their surfaces are pitted in many with ugly grooves and dotted with meteorite dents. One of them, belonging to Phobos, is so huge in shape that, apparently, it was formed from an impact that almost split this asteroid into pieces.
The crater was named Stickney. Its very existence gave rise to many curious theories about its origin. And some of them seem almost fantastic, telling about the nuclear strike of the Martians in order to change the trajectory of the satellite's rotation. Such thoughts are suggested by the nature of the formed funnel.
Scientists are sure that Deimos, the smaller of the "brothers", over time, due to the decrease in orbit, is getting closer to Mars. And prone to falling to the surface of the planet. A similar thing can happen in the near future, if its indicators go over a certain Roche limit - the value of a critical, but safe, distance, the decrease of which entails the rupture of the body by gravitational forces. The same could have happened millennia ago with Phobos, if not for the timely measure of the inhabitants of the Red Planet.
Geology professor A. Portnov proposed a hypothesis according to which Mars had another asteroid satellite - Thanatos (Death). The name was not chosen by chance, since it was its fragments, as a result of exceeding the critical value of Roche and the subsequent fall, that destroyed all life on the "bloody" planet. The Martians tried to prevent the tragedy, but, even with great technical capabilities, apparently, they could not do everything.
Olbers hypothetical planet
Deadly Shards! How, when and why could they be near Mars, having played a fatal role in its fate? To answer this question, it is possible, and even logical, to turn to ancient myths, because our ancestors watched the events in the starry firmament from time immemorial and might well have noticed something interesting.
In the last century, the American writer and orientalist Zakaria Sitchin deciphered Sumerian texts on clay tablets, presumably dating back about six thousand years. They mentioned a shining star that exploded during a terrifying cosmic catastrophe. Perhaps in this case, the hypothetical planet of G. Olbers was meant: back in 1804, the scientist suggested that the belt of asteroids orbiting located between Mars and Jupiter was once one whole, crumbled into fragments.
The scale of the cosmic disaster that occurred at that time, and the death of Phaeton can be judged from the Greek legends, which tell that on Earth due to celestial cataclysms, all living things could perish because of the "fiery chariot moving across the sky", which scattered into pieces … And even the Sun “closed its face for the whole day”, such were the consequences of the cosmic tragedy for earthlings.
Martian pyramids
Sidonia seems now to modern researchers to beckon with its secrets and immensely mysterious region of Mars. This area is located between two vast plains on the coast of the vast but dead Northern Ocean. This curious territory became famous in the second half of the past century, when, with the help of an orbiter launched into space, pictures of one of the elevations with an image were obtained, the contours of which resembled the face of a man who was soon awarded the nickname "Martian Sphinx". And later, a whole city of "pyramids" was discovered nearby - objects that have a triangular and rounded, unusually regular shape. Some of them line up with various geometric shapes.
What is the origin of these natural formations or structures of intelligent beings has not yet been clarified. But in the lower part of some of them, on high-quality images, you can clearly see rounded holes, which may well be the entrances to these structures. All this leads scientists to think about the existence of an ancient, once seething with life, Martian city. This hypothesis received unexpected and sensational confirmation when the photographs of one of the stones were able to see Arabic numerals, namely: "194". This gives rise to guesses not only about the undoubted existence of a highly developed, but dead or undergoing significant changes and cataclysms, Martian civilization, but also about its direct connection with ancient earthly cultures.
