Martian Channels Not Made by Intelligent Beings

Upon closer inspection of the Martian surface, one cannot but stop and stare in amazement at the canal-like features crossing the landscape. Many astronomers hypothesized that these were constructs belonging to a long-lost Martian civilization, but the idea has since been discredited.

In modern times, the attribution of these features to an alien society is considered to be one of the most misguided ideas in the field of astronomy, even if many scientists spent a good deal of their careers trying to prove that this is the case.

From a certain perspective, their work is not entirely futile. Recent investigations have concluded that liquid water once flowed on Mars, and also that the planet was a lot warmer in its distant past than it is now. This raises the interesting prospect that life may have developed there.

However, if that was the case, it is unlikely that lifeforms on the Red Planet had sufficient time to develop to a more complex stage, potentially rivaling our species in terms of intelligence and cunning.

A century or two ago, astronomers who observed the canals on the surface of Mars were convinced that they were created by advanced civilizations that were trying to channel the flow of water to their drying planet. Studies have since demonstrated that these features do not even exist.

Investigations conducted by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument aboard the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have revealed the existence of channels on Mars, but they can be found only at the rims of craters and in canyons.

These are areas most likely to have been circulated by running water in the planet's distant past. The latest researches indicate that liquid water could exist on Mars even now, albeit only during the summer. The liquid would also contain large amounts of salts.

The latter enable water to remain liquid at temperatures much lower than the standard freezing point for water. Still, we currently don't have the capabilities needed to conduct live observations of these events occurring. In the future, orbiters may be able to image the proposed phenomenon in real-time.

At this point, Mars remains one of the most mysterious bodies in the solar system, despite the large numbers of missions that have probed its surface and its atmosphere. The more researchers discover, the deeper the mysteries related to the world's distant past become, Space reports.

When NASA puts astronauts on the Red Planet, around 2035, we may finally answer some of these puzzling questions, and also determine whether life did exist long ago on our neighboring planet.