The red planet has always been one of the most mysterious objects in the sky for humans. Even ancient astronomers discovered that this celestial body and several others behave completely differently than other objects. Unlike other stars, they are constantly changing their position in the sky.
Actually, it’s
the name "planet" came to Russian and other European languages from ancient Greek, where it literally meant "wandering". Although the differences between planets and stars were discovered long before the Greeks by Sumerians and Babylonians, we still use the heritage of ancient civilization today. The planets were named according to the associations that they caused among the Greeks and Romans. The faded color of Venus was associated with sea foam, as a result of which it began to be identified with the goddess of love. Mercury, which moves fastest through the night sky, was associated with the famous messenger of the
gods (Hermes in the Greek version). The red-faced Mars could not but cause associations with fires and destruction. For which he received the name of the god of war.
And this planet attracted attention not only in antiquity. She arouses our interest in ourselves today. Perhaps, among all the colder bodies of the solar system, Mars is the most frequent guest in human art. The ancients associated him with the divine essence. In the Renaissance, when it became more known about the planets, Mars began to evoke even more bizarre fantasies. The question of whether there is life on Mars was often played out in science fiction novels. So, one of Herbert Wells’s first science fiction writer
his "War of the Worlds" describes the terrible Martians, far ahead of earthlings in technological development and flew to destroy our civilization. And
Edgar Burroughs, on the contrary, portrays Martian society as noble and strong, although surprising from the point of view of an earthling who fell into this company.
And what will science tell us: does life exist on Mars?
Very often, fantastic stories, as noted above, are inspired by writers and directors precisely with scientific ideas and ideas about the boundaries of the possible. For the first time, scientists rationally looked at the question of whether there is life on Mars, back in the 17th century. Then it was discovered through telescopes that the red planet has polar caps and a number of other characteristics similar to those on the earth. This, of course, gave rise to the idea of the possible existence of flora and fauna there. Similar circumstantial evidence has been debated by Earth scientists right up to the era of space travel.
In the end, to put an end to the debate about whether there is life on Mars or not, it was reliably possible in only one way. So, the first artificial object was launched to the planet in 1962, but control was lost. It was the Soviet apparatus Mars-1. Mars-2 reached the surface of the planet, but crashed during landing. And only Mars-3 in 1971 successfully reached the goal and helped to conduct a series of valuable experiments. Thanks
the Soviet program "Mars" and the American "Viking" finally had a close acquaintance with this celestial body.
Unfortunately or fortunately, spacecraft not only did not find traces of life, but also the conditions that the red planet met, spoke about the impossibility of the existence of complex organisms there. However, the fact that the atmosphere of Mars mainly consists of carbon dioxide leaves serious hopes for finding traces of life in the past. The fact is that carbon dioxide is a product of plant life. And then its presence can be explained if life on Mars really existed once.
Already in the 2000s, spacecraft were again sent to the planet to study. “Phoenix” in 2008 and Curiosity (“Curiosity”) in 2012. The latter is an entire research station. Its purpose is to thoroughly study the soil of the planet. Indeed, previous studies have shown that there can be no complicated life. But whether there is life of microorganisms on Mars, and if so, where and at what depth it will be found, remains a very curious mystery. The basis for these hopes is meteorites of Martian origin, which once fell to Earth. Surprisingly, traces of primitive bacteria were discovered there. In addition, there is reason to believe that even today water has been preserved on the planet. And this gives a significant head start for life in all its manifestations.