There’s something about Mars. It tickles the imagination like no other planet; in our stories about it, fact and fiction tend to blur. Nineteenth-century astronomers believed they saw canals on Mars, proof of intelligent life. In 1938, an Orson Welles radio play convinced some listeners that a Martian invasion had kicked off a war of the worlds. NASA and its robots feed us tantalizing tidbits suggesting liquid water in some distant past, and the public runs with it: In 1999, 35 percent of respondents... Читать дальше...
