The Italian astronomer Giovanni
Schiaparelli in 1877 was the first to report the
presence on Mars of "canali" , an
Italian word meaning naturally occurring channels, like river channels.Percival Lowell, Mars, and the Canals
The Italian astronomer Giovanni
Schiaparelli in 1877 was the first to report the
presence on Mars of "canali" , an
Italian word meaning naturally occurring channels, like river channels.
Percival Lowell (1855-1916)
was one of the best known observers of the planet Mars. He
established an observatory (now Lowell Observatory
) in Flagstaff, Arizona for the express purpose of observing the
Martian "canali", which Lowell
mistranslated as "canals". He
concluded that these canals were built by intelligent beings to
supposedly supply water from the melting polar caps to a desert
world.
Lowell's misunderstanding and overactive
imagination led to the notion that Mars was inhabited by
intelligent beings who were capable of planet wide engineering
projects, and is
the source of many science fiction stories about the red planet.
