MARS. Monuments, cities, pyramids, roads and canals!

Mars has featured in mankind's fantasies and mythology for thousands of years. The planet itself is named after the Roman god of war. Jonathan Swift wrote in "Gulliver's Travels" in 1726 that astronomers on the mythical floating land of Laputa had discovered two swiftly moving moons on Mars, and provided information on their distances from Mars and their periods of revolution about Mars.

Astonishingly, the moons of Mars had not been discovered yet, and would not be for another hundred and fifty years or so, though Kepler had surmised before Swift's time that Mars had two moons. Swift's information on the distances from the planet and the revolution periods of Mars two moons was extremely accurate, however, many scientists pass it off as a good guess.

This was only the beginning of the mystery of the moons of Mars, and of Mars itself. Prior to 1877, when the moons were seen for the first time, no one had seen any moons near the planet even though excellent telescopes at the disposal of astronomers were easily capable of discerning them.

Mars was a popular planet to view and literally hundreds of astronomers observed it for some time. These same astronomers even discovered moons on Uranus. Then one day Asaph Hall found that Mars had two satellites where none had been observed before.

The two Martian satellites moved at very high speeds and appeared to travel in different directions! These and other factors prompted prominent astronomers to actually suppose that the moons might be artificial!

Phobos (Fear), about 13 by 16 miles, orbits some 5,800 miles from the center of Mars every 7 hours, 39 minutes.

Diemos (Terror), 7 by 9 miles, orbits some 14,600 miles from the center of Mars every 30 hours, 17 minutes.

Soviet astronomer I.S. Schklovsky pointed out that the Martian satellite Phobos exhibits a strange acceleration irregularity which would be expected only if the satellite were a huge hollow metallic sphere. The same irregularity, however, would be impossible for a natural astronomical body.

Therefore, says Dr. Schklovsky, at least one of the moons of Mars is not a natural object, but an artificial satellite placed in orbit around the planet, possibly in 1877, or shortly before that time.

A few years later, astronomers noticed markings that seemed to be connected in a system that covered the whole planet. These markings were dubbed "canals" and were believed to be just that by many of the foremost astronomers of the time. Italian astronomer Schiaparelli was first to note the canals in the early 1890s and other astronomers began to notice them as well.

American astronomer Percival Lowell, who built one of the best observatories in the world in Flagstaff, Arizona, became obsessed with the canals, drew detailed maps of them and worried that the Martians were fighting a losing battle on a dying planet.

Something like canals exist, there can be no doubt. What they are is anybody's guess. Considering the great variety of canals on the Martian surface, it was believed by some that the Martians were trying to signal us and plans were suggested for planting mid-western crops in patterns by way of acknowledging the communication. (The first crop circles?)

In the 1910 issue of "Nature," astronomer James Worthington, after visiting Lowell at his observatory in Flagstaff, commented, "As to the deductions which Dr. Lowell had drawn from his observations I have nothing to say except that the startlingly artificial and geometrical appearance of the markings did force itself upon me."

Flashes of light were frequently seen on Mars and have been called Transient Martian Phenomena, similar to Transient Lunar Phenomena. Some astronomers interpreted it as signals; others thought them to be clouds drifting across the surface.

One particular place where the flashes of light occurred is the lcarium Mare. Percival Lowell speaking at the American Philosophical Society meeting in December 1901, declared that the more than 400 light flashes seen in the Mare were clouds reflecting light. He believed lcarium Mare was a great tract of vegetation forming layers of clouds.

After Percival Lowell died other scientists declared that there was no life on Mars, nor on any of the other planets in our solar system. This did nothing, however, to quell the hysteria when Orson Wells broadcast his Halloween hoax of H.G. Wells' "War Of The Worlds," simulating an invasion by Martians.

After Viking 1 Orbiter flew past Mars on July 31, 1976 at an altitude of 1,278 miles, taking pictures of the surface, some new and interesting information suddenly appeared in a photograph released and described by NASA only as "the northern latitudes of Mars."

In the photograph since published several times, a huge rock formation that looks like a face can be seen. This formation has been measured as one mile across. NASA claims that it is an illusion caused by the angle of the sun.

To the left of the photo are two rock formations which appear to be pyramidical in shape. They are clearly throwing out triangular shadows. Parallel lines, looking like perfectly straight runways or roads appear in the upper let hand portion on the photo.

According to Jim Safran of Lunar Photos in Van Nuys, California, these markings appear in quite a few of the Viking Mars photos. Oddly, these artificial-looking markings have been cropped out of photos appearing in Omni magazine and are not mentioned.

But two computer scientists who work for Computer Science echnicolor Associates, of Seabrook, Maryland, contract workers for NASA, noticed the photos, and decided to analyze them. The scientists, Vincent DiPietro and Greg Molenaar concluded that the face in the photos, taken of the Elysian Plains, would "appear to have been carved rather than formed by nature," as there is no surrounding sediment that could have resulted from natural erosion.

Additionally, they concluded that the face was truly symmetrical, having two halves, each containing an "eye," a "cheek" and continuation of the "mouth." They even discovered what resembles an eyewall with a visible pupil in the eye socket!

Then science writer Richard Hoagland got original copies of the photos and claimed to have found, in the same photo, a "lost civilization on Mars," as reported in Omni, Vol. 7 No. 6, March, 1985!

They turned their attentions to the pyramid features to the left of the face, and to the grid-like markings like the plan of a city in the shadows of the upper pyramid. Hoagland also spotted a series of right angles contributing to an overall impression of a main avenue leading toward the face.

Hoagland discovered that this "avenue" seems to be aligned with the face, which runs along a northeast-southwest axis with the Martian poles.

A Martian standing in the center of the "city," gazing east over the face, would be sighting along a solstice alignment; that is, seeing the sun rise directly over the face on the longest day of the Martian year. Hoagland surmised that for 50,000 years, the first summer sun of the year would have risen above the face.

As the planet tilted with time, the alignment of the solstice viewing would have passed right through the top of the pyramid.

The honeycomb-like walls in the shadow of the pyramid cast shadows. The grid spacing suspiciously resembles that of real city streets, and the layout is aligned toward the winter solstice sunrise.

An architect friend of Hoagland's calculated the buildings were originally oriented in a manner to best use the scant winter warmth of the shortest day of the Martian year.

Harold Masursky, senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey and one of the world's leading experts on Martian geology, in charge of selecting the sites where the Viking landers set down, told Omni magazine, "If you're going to say features like that are evidence for a past civilization, that's total nonsense. I'm working on finding landing sites for a possible Mars Rover. And this is not one of the areas where I would send what is probably a thirty-billion dollar mission. In fact, if somebody bought us a free one, I'm not sure I'd send it there because there are too many other places that are more interesting."

Is Masursky toeing the party line by refusing to acknowledge the possibility of life on Mars at some time in the distant past? He is not an idiot, and considering NASA's startling finds on the Moon, their many secret projects and cover ups, it is not surprising that he would make those declarations.

He is either on the periphery of NASA knowledge, and actually believes that there is nothing worth viewing, or he is trying to divert attention from this startling find and cover up what may even be a "live city."

An Avon book published in the United States in 1978, and which originally appeared as a BBC special in Britain, called "Alternative 3" was reportedly an investigation into the disappearance of scientists in Britain and the United States. According to the book, these scientists were being sent to Mars by NASA to work in secret cities there, in an effort to create a habitual climate on Mars, which work included melting the polar ice caps and building dome-cities.

The reason stated in the book was that NASA was doing this because the Earth's atmosphere is becoming super-heated and unbreathable.

A secret conspiracy, involving most of the world's governments, including Russia, were working to move a certain portion of mankind to Mars, the first manned landing on Mars having taken place in the early 1960s.

Mars bases were begun shortly afterwards. Antigravity ships were used to shuttle scientists and "brain washed," kidnapped, slave-workers to the bases to work. There was a lunar staging base in a crater on the moon. These scientists were listed as missing or killed by foreign agents so people would not be looking for them.

It was in fact an April Fool's Day television special done for the BBC that was never aired because of a television strike in Britain. When it was finally aired, most people did not realize that it was an April Fool's joke. It was later published in Britain and the United States in book form as "science fact," also on April Fool's Day.

An interesting story, it is unlikely considering the difficulty both the Soviets and the Americans had in just landing space probes on the moon in the early sixties. Even if NASA possessed anti-gravity vehicles in 1965, it seems unlikely that they would have been flying them to Mars when they could not even hit the moon with a Ranger.

Furthermore, the author, Leslie Watkins, admitted that the book was a hoax; still, many UFO enthusiasts believe it.

One does wonder, however, if NASA is visiting Mars in "Anti-Gravity" ships. It seems unlikely. They are far too busy setting up bases on the Moon. With all the UFOs out there and their occasional interference, NASA may consider it too dangerous to send their people on a flight to Mars, particularly if the reports of a huge space station orbiting the planet are valid.

One cannot help but think that there may have been intelligent life on Mars in the past, if not now. Some UFOs may have come from Mars to Earth at some time in the past, perhaps to escape an environmental calamity such as might befall the Earth not too many years hence.

But if we are to accept that idea, we must be able to produce some kind of evidence to back up the claim, otherwise it is nothing but idle speculation.

The requirements for living organisms to evolve from non-living chemicals (hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water) almost certainly existed on Mars about 4 billion years ago. Life could have formed and adapted, evolving right up to the time of the Exodus.

Of four experiments conducted aboard Viking landers, three gave evidence of life forms still on Mars in 1976. The fourth experiment detected none.

Living Martians, in whatever form, would have to exist without oxygen and large amounts of water for long periods of time, would have to live underground or possess natural shielding from solar ultraviolet and cosmic radiation, and would be required to withstand great temperature changes over short periods of time.

While each of these requirements is met by earth organisms of some sort, no earth organism meets them all, but only because no living earth organism has been forced to do so.

Those coming closest to meeting all the requirements are reptiles and it is interesting to note that a number of people have reported lizard-like aliens scrubbing about in the bushes outside landed UFOs.

In 1982 Dale Russell and R. Séguin of Ottawa published an article on an intelligence dinosaur, Stenonychosaurus, a small, fast creature with a large brain and cunning hunting skills. In their paper, they showed a detailed model of the upright bipedal creature this dinosaur might have become had it continued to evolve from the Cretaceous period about 64 million years ago to the present day.

Russell and Séguin assumed for it a large brain, and the short neck and upright posture was arrived at as a way of balancing the head more efficiently. The vertical posture removed the need for a tail. The legs were modified by lowering the ankle to the ground and the forefoot was lengthened. This creature would have stood upright at about five feet. Given the proper conditions and time, this evolution would have been possible.