Mars and Its Mystery

Fifty years ago, asking whether the Sun contained familiar elements would have seemed absurd. Now Edward Sylvester Morse dares to ask: Is Mars inhabited—and who is qualified to answer?

In the early twentieth-century debate over Mars, telescope observers reported a web of lines across the planet, while other astronomers doubted they could see them at all. Morse argues that understanding these markings takes more than mathematics: readers must consider Earth’s landscapes, climate, geology, and the conditions that sustain life. With Schiaparelli’s and Lowell’s observations under fire, the question is not merely whether Mars has canals, but whether its surface bears signs of intelligence—and whether our own assumptions blind us to them. Could those distant lines be the work of living beings, or are they something else entirely?

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