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Article: Water world? New satellite pictures hint that water flows on Mars.(EARTH)
- Article from:
- Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication
- Article date:
- March 16, 2007
- Author:
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In the early 1900s, astronomer Percival Lowell thought Martians were real. His evidence? Dark lines on the planet seen through his telescope in Flagstaff, Ariz. The lines, Lowell believed, were canals.
In his book Mars As the Abode of Life, Lowell imagined a dying civilization on Mars. His Martians inhabited a desert world and dug canals to bring water from the icy poles to their cities.
Lowell was wrong, of course, about advanced life-forms on Mars. The lines he saw were probably optical illusions. But new data from the Red Planet indicate he may have been right about flowing water after all--albeit in ways he didn't imagine. New pictures taken by an ...