Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World
Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World
THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD The revelations are attributed to an anonymous Soviet source and breathlessly describe discoveries made by a nonexistent Soviet space vehicle. But the story of 'The Face' is almost entirely an American one. It was found by one of the Viking orbiters in 1976. There was an unfortunate dismissal of the feature by a project official as a trick of light and shadow, which prompted a later accusation that NASA was covering up the discovery of the millennium. A few engineers, computer specialists and others - some of them contract employees of NASA - worked on their own time digitally to enhance the image. Perhaps they hoped for stunning revelations. That's permissible in science, even encouraged - as long as your standards of evidence are high. Some of them were fairly cautious and deserve to be commended for advancing the subject. Others were less restrained, deducing not only that the Face was a genuine, monumental sculpture of a human being, but claiming to find a city nearby with temples and fortifications.* From spurious arguments, one writer announced that the monuments had a particular astronomical orientation - not now, though, but half a million years ago - from which it followed that the Cydonian wonders were erected in that remote epoch. But then how could the builders have been human? Half a million years ago, our ancestors were busy mastering stone tools and fire. They did not have spaceships. The Martian Face is compared to 'similar faces . . . constructed in civilizations on Earth. The faces are looking up at the sky because they're looking up to God.' Or the Face was constructed by the survivors of an interplanetary war that left the surface of Mars (and the Moon) pockmarked and ravaged. What causes all those craters anyway? Is the Face a remnant of a long-extinct human civilization? Were the builders originally from Earth or Mars? Could the Face have been sculpted by interstellar visitors * The general idea is quite old, going back at least a century to the Martian canal myth of Percival Lowell. As one of many examples, P.E. Cleator, in his 1936 book Rockets Through Space: The Dawn of Interplanetary Travel, speculated: 'On Mars, the crumbling remains of ancient civilizations may be found, mutely testifying to the one-time glory of a dying world.' 54
The Man in the Moon and the Face on Mars stopping briefly on Mars? Was it left for us to discover? Might they also have come to Earth and initiated life here? Or at least human life? Were they, whoever they were, gods? Much fervent speculation is evoked. More recently, claims have been made for a connection between 'monuments' on Mars and 'crop circles' on Earth; of inexhaustible supplies of energy waiting to be extracted from ancient Martian machines; and of a massive NASA cover-up to hide the truth from the American public. Such pronouncements go far beyond more incautious speculation about enigmatic landforms. When, in August 1993, the Mars Observer spacecraft failed within hailing distance of Mars, there were those who accused NASA of faking the mishap so it could study the Face in detail without having to release the images to the public. (If so, the charade is quite elaborate: all the experts on Martian geomorphology know nothing about it, and some of us have been working hard to design new missions to Mars less vulnerable to the malfunction that destroyed Mars Observer.) There was even a handful of pickets outside the gates of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, worked up over this supposed abuse of power. The tabloid Weekly World News for 14 September 1993 devoted its front page to the headline 'New NASA Photo Proves Humans Lived on Mars!' A fake face, allegedly taken by Mars Observer in orbit about Mars (in fact, the spacecraft seems to have failed before achieving orbit), is said by a non-existent 'leading space scientist' to prove that Martians colonized Earth 200,000 years ago. The information is being suppressed, he is made to say, to prevent 'world panic'. Put aside the improbability that such a revelation would actually lead to 'world panic'. For anyone who has witnessed a portentous scientific finding in the making - the July 1994 impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter comes to mind - it will be clear that scientists tend to be effervescent and uncontainable. They have an indomitable compulsion to share new data. Only through prior agreement, not ex post facto, do scientists abide military secrecy. I reject the notion that science is by its nature secretive. Its culture and ethos are, and for very good reason, collective, collaborative and communicative. 55
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The Man in the Moon and the Face on Mars<br />
stopping briefly on Mars? Was it left for us to discover? Might<br />
they also have come to Earth and initiated life here? Or at least<br />
human life? Were they, whoever they were, gods? Much fervent<br />
speculation is evoked.<br />
More recently, claims have been made for a connection between<br />
'monuments' on Mars and 'crop circles' on Earth; of inexhaustible<br />
supplies of energy waiting to be extracted from ancient Martian<br />
machines; and of a massive NASA cover-up to hide the truth from<br />
the American public. Such pronouncements go far beyond more<br />
incautious speculation about enigmatic landforms.<br />
When, in August 1993, the Mars Observer spacecraft failed<br />
within hailing distance of Mars, there were those who accused<br />
NASA of faking the mishap so it could study the Face in detail<br />
without having to release the images to the public. (If so, the<br />
charade is quite elaborate: all the experts on Martian geomorphology<br />
know nothing about it, and some of us have been working<br />
hard to design new missions to Mars less vulnerable to the<br />
malfunction that destroyed Mars Observer.) There was even a<br />
handful of pickets outside the gates of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,<br />
worked up over this supposed abuse of power.<br />
The tabloid Weekly World News for 14 September 1993 devoted<br />
its front page to the headline 'New NASA Photo Proves Humans<br />
Lived on Mars!' A fake face, allegedly taken by Mars Observer in<br />
orbit about Mars (in fact, the spacecraft seems to have failed<br />
before achieving orbit), is said by a non-existent 'leading space<br />
scientist' to prove that Martians colonized Earth 200,000 years<br />
ago. The information is being suppressed, he is made to say, to<br />
prevent 'world panic'.<br />
Put aside the improbability that such a revelation would actually<br />
lead to 'world panic'. For anyone who has witnessed a portentous<br />
scientific finding in the making - the July 1994 impact of Comet<br />
Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter comes to mind - it will be clear<br />
that scientists tend to be effervescent and uncontainable. They<br />
have an indomitable compulsion to share new data. Only through<br />
prior agreement, not ex post facto, do scientists abide military<br />
secrecy. I reject the notion that science is by its nature secretive.<br />
Its culture and ethos are, and for very good reason, collective,<br />
collaborative and communicative.<br />
55
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