Mars has always been considered the twin of the Earth, its size is about half the size of the Earth and it is a little further from the Sun, its day is 24 hours long and its axis of rotation is the same as ours, so it also has seasons like ours. The length of its year is a little less than double the length of our year, and also the density and composition of its rocks are very similar to ours.
Albert Kalifa, Israel Astronomical Society
The article is taken from the journal "Astronomy" and courtesy of the Israeli Astronomical Society
Mars has always been considered the twin of the Earth, its size is about half the size of the Earth and it is a little further from the Sun, its day is 24 hours long and its axis of rotation is the same as ours, so it also has seasons like ours. The length of its year is a little less than double the length of our year, and also the density and composition of its rocks are very similar to ours.
If life developed on Earth, it was very likely that it would also develop on Mars. But there are two important conditions for the existence of life that are missing on Mars: it is today almost without an atmosphere and almost without water.
There are many signs that a lot of water once flowed on its surface with a thick atmosphere and a warm temperature, but for some reason the atmosphere thinned, the temperature dropped and the water evaporated or went below the surface, and some of it is today at the poles.
Therefore, due to the lack of Mzal (water flowing into the world), literally, there is no developed life on it today, but on the other hand it is possible that there are organisms of simple life on it today (Gemini Earth - Kalifa Albert - 'Astronomy' vol. 28, issue 3).
In connection with the effort to search for any life forms on Mars, four periods can be identified in the last 120 years with different characteristics for the search for life.
The initial hypothesis period
In 1877, the Italian astronomer from Milan Govani Sciparelli published a diagram of Mars with strange lines and claimed that he noticed these lines on the surface of Mars with the help of a telescope and called them "channels" in Italian. Today it is known that these are drainage channels of water that probably once flowed on Mars. These "channels" were later mistakenly translated into Eglit as "canals", and from this the hypothesis arose that they were water canals dug by advanced productions that lived on Mars in order to transport water from the poles to the arid equatorial regions. for irrigation purposes.
The American astronomer "Laval" from Arizona, who was a contemporary of Skipperelli, who believed in the existence of highly developed life on Mars, made it even bigger. He tried, at the beginning of the twentieth century, to convince the scientific community and the general public of the truth of the hypothesis regarding the existence of life on Mars.
This belief is reflected both in public opinion and in the media, especially in the period of UFOs.
As you know, the era of UFOs began in 1947 in the USA with the publication of the flying saucer that supposedly crashed in the town of "Roswell", according to the story, bodies of aliens were found in the crash, they were taken for treatment and supposedly taken by the US Air Force to an unknown destination. For decades, America, and following it the whole world, has been plagued by many advertisements about flying saucers out of a belief in the existence of aliens who visit us frequently.
The peak of this mass psychosis was in the early XNUMXs when the movie actor Orson Wills broadcast a show on live radio as if aliens from Mars had landed in the USA with the goal of conquering the world. The broadcast was so convincing that tens of thousands of Americans ran into the streets to seek refuge from the invasion from Mars taking place 'right now'. This case proves that Mars was held as the most acceptable place in the public opinion of the time for the presence of other developed life outside the Earth. A great many books, studies and science fiction have been published since then establishing Mars as the planet with the possibility of advanced life.
The period of the finding is ambiguous
Two hundred years since the independence of the USA, on July 4, 1976, two American spacecraft landed on Mars, Viking 1,2, XNUMX.
They conducted four different tests to detect living microorganisms in the Martian soil. These tests included:
1- Discovery of organic molecules: reflected radiation from Martian soil was passed through a chromograph and spectrometer that were in the spacecraft to detect the presence of organic molecules as proof of the presence of a living organism in the soil.
2- Metabolism: A handful of soil from Mars was placed in a closed chamber, mixed with radioactive building blocks necessary for the construction of organic molecules, and for about a week it was checked whether radioactive gas such as CO2 was emitted from the handful of soil.
3- Photosynthesis: A handful of soil was placed in a closed cell, radioactive CO2 gas was flowed into the cell, and after about a week it was checked whether some of the gas was assimilated by living organisms that might be in the soil, to build new organic matter.
4- Gas exchange: A handful of soil was placed in a closed chamber, into which a precise mixture of gases was inserted that also contained CO2 in a precise amount. After about a week, it was checked whether there was a change in the amount of CO2, a change that could be caused by the activity of a living microorganism.
All the above tests gave ambiguous results, the presence of a living organism was not unequivocally discovered in the Martian soil. The results of the aforementioned tests are still a matter of debate.
The period of surprising speculation.
After the results of the Viking tests were inconclusive, NASA made a sensational announcement in 1996 about finding traces of life that came from Mars. She presented a meteorite about 10 cm in size named ALH84001, it was the first meteorite found in 1984 at the South Pole in the 'All Hills' area. It fell there 13 thousand years ago, after being thrown from Mars 16 million years ago by an asteroid impact. According to the gases trapped inside the asteroid it was clearly determined that it came from Mars. NASA stated that the study of this meteorite raises the possibility of the development of living microorganisms on Mars in the distant past, since three surprising findings were found inside the meteorite:
A - Crystalline iron that can also be formed by a living organism.
B - carbonates that are a product of living cells.
C - models inside the meteorite that look like fossils of bacteria or tiny productions.
Each of these findings separately has no proof of the development of life. But all three together in one meteorite raises a reasonable possibility of the development of living cells on Mars in the past.
The opponents of this statement claim that NASA made the above statement out of a need to create public opinion to increase the cut federal financial aid for its programs.
The period of intensive research
In the last decade, a special effort was invested in the study of Mars and especially in the search for water and life on its surface. Although most of the effort was made by the Americans for budget reasons, the Russians were the first to reach Mars back in 1962 with the Mars-1 spacecraft that crashed on it. A serious and last attempt by the Russians failed in 1996 when they tried to send Mars-96 to Mars with the aim of driving a stake into the Martian soil to a depth of one meter, from there to raise a soil sample for testing, but during the launch the last stage of the spacecraft's engine did not work, and it fell in Bolivia.
The Americans also had quite a few failures, and the most painful of all was in 1994 with the sophisticated "Mars Observer" spacecraft that cost half a billion dollars. The spacecraft reached Mars, but its transmission went silent when the engine that was supposed to put it into orbit around Mars was turned on, and it is not known what happened to it to this day.
The Americans had a great success with the shipment from the surface of Mars in 1997 with an automatic patrol vehicle 63 cm long that traveled on a 6-wheel system, operated successfully for several months until it froze. He tested temperature, winds, atmospheric composition and rocks.
Two years later the Odyssey spacecraft was sent, and in January 2004 two more American spacecraft (Spirit and Opportunity) arrived there and a failed landing attempt by a European spacecraft named "Bagel". The main mission of the American robotic vehicles was to find water on Mars or signs of its presence in the past and it succeeded. The vehicles are not equipped with means to directly check for the presence of life, thus leaving employment for the following missions.
Mainly for checking the presence of water or discovering traces of life that may have developed there.
The plans for the future
Today there are plans to explore Mars by sending unmanned spacecraft, within a window of time that opens every two years, when Mars is closest to us. But today NASA does not have an operational plan to send a person
to Mars due to lack of budgets. Even if they receive budgets and a positive decision is made in this decade, the shipment will not be able to be carried out before the mid-twenties, that is, the year 2025. Although the Chinese have stated their desire to send a man to Mars, they currently have neither the technology nor the resources necessary for this, and it seems that the manned shipment to Mars will be carried out with an effort Joint International Space Station as a continuation of the "Alpha" International Space Station.
The Israeli Astronomical Society
