For centuries people have speculated about the possibility of life on Mars owing to the planet's proximity and similarity to Earth. Serious searches for evidence of life began in the 19th century, and continue via telescopic investigations and landed missions. While early work focused on phenomenology and bordered on fantasy, modern scientific inquiry has emphasized the search for chemical biosignatures of life in the soil and rocks at the planet's surface, and the search for biomarker gases in the atmosphere. Fictional Martians have been a recurring feature of popular entertainment of the 20th and 21st centuries, and it remains an open question whether life currently exists on Mars, or has existed there in the past.
Read more about Life On Mars: Early Speculation, Meteorites, Liquid Water, Methane, Formaldehyde, Silica, Geysers On Mars, Cosmic Radiation, Life On Earth Under Martian Conditions
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or mars:
“... when you make it a moral necessity for the young to dabble in all the subjects that the books on the top shelf are written about, you kill two very large birds with one stone: you satisfy precious curiosities, and you make them believe that they know as much about life as people who really know something. If college boys are solemnly advised to listen to lectures on prostitution, they will listen; and who is to blame if some time, in a less moral moment, they profit by their information?”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“Human beings will be happier—not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)