Why Martian Canals Still Matter

spanish philosopher george santiana once famously wrote those who do not know history a destined to repeat it towards the end of the 19th century more than 115 years ago famed astronomer percival lowell became convinced that mars featured a network of artificial canals constructed by an advanced martian civilization in 1908 lowell wrote the inference is so forthright as to be shared by those who have not seen them to the extent of instant denial of their objectivity drawings of them like too strange to be true so skepticism imbues to the draftsman their artificial fashioning not realizing that by doing so bears unconscious witness to their character for in order to disprove the deduction it is driven to deny the fact now the fact can look after itself and will be recognized in time perhaps in the modern day we could imagine lol appearing on various podcasts expressing the short-sightedness of his colleagues their refusal to agree with him as evidence for their lack of objectivity highlighting his now three books on the topic that he recommends we buy and passionately describing how history would prove him right that history would reveal how wrong his critics were rock verify range go range green first stage tank pressing up t-minus 15 seconds stage one propulsion nominal and when the chamber pressure is on stage two continues to follow subsonic speeds and the heat hill has been separated [Music] navigation has confirmed that the parachute has deployed and we are seeing significant decelerations experiencing maximum points shut down [Music] on the surface of mars ready to begin seeking the fans of past life [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] this past week we've been celebrating the incredible achievement of nasa's perseverance rover successfully landing on mars equipped with these high resolution cameras being able to see these unprecedented vistas of the martian surface an incredible windswept desolate world one that was once sculpted by surface water now long since gone and there can be no doubt that canals absolutely do not exist on the martian surface in truth even the most optimistic advocates quietly slipped away after mariner 4 visited mars in 1965 but for over half a century the idea of martian canals persisted in popular culture and even amongst some scientists why how did this happen you might wonder why am i discussing the martian canal something that was clearly shown to be wrong over half a century ago well the story of the martian canals is a fascinating example of how even a single scientist can strongly influence the public's perception of a scientific topic even in the face of widespread skepticism and even ridicule from the scientific community the truth is that when an astronomer says aliens people listen because aliens sells and that hasn't changed despite over a century of progress the public's attention remains captivated by claims of alien life and media outlets give enormous air time to such claims i don't think any of us can or should criticize our interest in this question it's one of the most basic things we can ask about the universe and something we've clearly been fascinated about on this channel no i think the real issue here is balance because many of us so desperately hunger news of alien life we tend to give disproportionate air time to the outlier claims often at the expense of the scientific consensus and when the scientific consensus doesn't abide by our hopes many even claim that the scientific mainstream must be broken flawed or closed-minded after all how else could they explain why so many disagree with them it's easy to end up in a spiraling path where we only seek and give credence to that evidence which supports our preconceptions which describes a well-known effect called confirmation bias confirmation bias is seductive and intoxicating now more than ever we have the ability to google someone who agrees with just about any position you can think of and finding someone who agrees with you feels good on the other hand being challenged being forced to revisit your beliefs especially when they become entrenched to your very identity that's a courageous act that's uncomfortable that's hard with 2020 hindsight we can look back at the claims of the martian canals and of course realize that they're wrong to me what's so striking is the certainty to which lol seems to have assigned to it as an example when modern day astronomers detect a new exoplanet they typically say it is a planet to 99 confidence in fact that's exactly what we did in the last video what that means though is that there's a one percent chance that that planet isn't real and that's just the way it is so amongst a catalog of 1 000 exoplanets that means that 10 likely aren't real now that might seem frustrating a lack of absolute confidence but that just simply never happens in science we don't have 100 confidence in really anything although in many cases it can asymptotically approach that in his second book about the martian canals lowell wrote that mars is inhabited by beings of some sort or other we may consider as certain as it is uncertain what these beings may be but why did lol think this how did he become so convinced midway in our life's journey i went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood percival lowell was a fascinating historical figure with a passion for travel science and far eastern culture born in boston to a wealthy family he spent time in europe as a child was educated at harvard and then traveled to korea and japan and later life writing numerous books about japanese religion and behavior in 1893 he moved back to the united states aged 38 with a growing fascination for astronomy the planets and especially mars lowell was influenced by the work of italian astronomer giovanni schiaparelli who in 1877 observed the opposition of mars which means when the earth and mars are at closest approach and from these observations shi aberli claimed to have observed narrow features across the surface as sketched here he described these as canali which in italian means channels but this was often mistranslated as canals in the english-speaking world by modern standards shiaple used a fairly small 8-inch refracting telescope which would have produced images something like this and it should be noted that he himself was nearly completely colorblind in brief moments the image may have improved due to fluctuations in the earth's atmosphere but clearly the claim of channels was pushing this telescope to its extremes perhaps it was no surprise then that few took shieparelli's claims seriously but lowell did and he was so intrigued by mars and the prospects of life there that he used his considerable wealth to build an observatory at flagstaff arizona one that still stands there today and is known as the lowell observatory on mars hill there he funded the construction of a 24-inch refracting telescope which he would personally spend countless hours observing with not only did this make lowell a skilled observer but his vision was also exceptional dr haskett darby then the leading practitioner in ophthalmology in boston once said that percival's eyesight was the keenest he had ever examined in his books lowell describes in detail his observations of mars from which he deduced numerous lines of reasoning for a habitable world as an example around the polar caps he reported a blue green band and even how the ice cap seemed to change in size along with this band from his first mars book as the snows dwindle in size the blue band around them shrank to correspond combining this with hints of polarized light from this region coming from a colleague william pickering lol wrote we may conclude that we have here a polar sea a real body of water now lowell is correct that there's a polar ice cap but the scale of the changes that he saw was not real likely caused by different observing conditions and viewing geometries he's also right that you can sometimes see this bluish hue this band around the poles but indeed you can actually also see this around the entire limb of the planet even modern images such as this one from the hubble space telescope see a bluish white haze the explanation is that even though mars has an atmosphere that's one percent the thickness of the earth's that's thick enough to cause refraction and scattering especially with the addition of lots of dust kicking around the fact that this haze stays around the limb even as mars rotates around is a giveaway that this is an optical illusion and not a real surface feature something lol could have potentially have noticed now lol really doesn't spend any time considering alternative explanations for his observations and this is a trend that you will actually often see in claims of alien life it's not that lowell's hypothesis of water was unreasonable especially given the available data at the time it's just that he doesn't seem to exhibit any degree of self-skepticism regarding this theory lowell was correct though in asserting that the rest of the planet seemed pretty devoid of water or even clouds and thus mars was largely a desert and this is important because it provides a clear motivation for his canal theory that a civilization would try to transport water from the poles down to the drier equatorial regions lowell reported seeing straight narrow lines which met at nexus points on the surface to quote lowell they are scarcely any perceptible breath seeming on the average should be less than a martian degree or between 20 and 30 miles wide photographic images at the time were a far worse quality than which a person could see through the eyepiece as shown here and thus the public were really forced to depend upon the testimony of lowell and shiapoli lowell was of course aware that few others saw these features yet this seemingly didn't perturb him indeed his first-hand account of these lines was enough for him to conclude that a civilization resided on mars in speaking to the editors of nature magazine he said it is a direct cicita from this that the planet is at present the abode of an intelligent constructive life lol was propelled into the public eye selling books appearing in the new york times on multiple occasions and becoming a household name he constructed detailed maps of the canals as shown here and even reported how they were changing and those new ones must be under construction but other observers disagree with lol for example astronomer edward barnard famous for discovering barnard star reported seeing no canals eugene antoniada used a superior 33-inch telescope and also saw none as noted at the beginning of this video lol seemed to have a disdain for anyone who disagreed with him as an example of this his assistant a.e douglas once wrote a letter to lowell's brother suggesting that the canals might merely be of psychological origin not real phenomena when lol found out he summarily fired douglas by 1909 outstanding photos captured by the new pick to midi observatory showed no such canali that same year the giant 60-inch mount wilson observatory performed closer observation of the claimed canals and revealed irregular geological features but no artificial structures soon after the notion of canals quickly fell out of favor with the public and became a topic of ridicule amongst his scientific colleagues lol passed away seven years later but he never backed down from his claims he died believing in a martian civilization so what did lol really see was he hallucinating that might be a simple explanation but shia barely saw similar features so were they both hallucinating the same thing and lowe's success in business philanthropy writing and his education suggests he was a high-functioning member of society and so like many who claimed to see ufos i don't think that law was hallucinating but he was clearly mistaken all the same similarly it doesn't seem in character to call a charlatan undoubtedly the attention he gained was seductive but i don't think he left the far east just to sell snake oil if it wasn't a hallucination and he wasn't deceiving yet we know that he was wrong how do we explain what lol saw as well as the great confidence which he attributed to his interpretations whilst we may never really know exactly what happened one likely contributing factor is a psychological effect known as just on reconfiguration gestalt psychology is the study of perceptual and cognitive configuration two of the desktop laws of perception are the laws of closure and of good continuation closure describes how when you look at these images you probably perceive a triangle a square and a circle not a haphazard series of lines your brain closes the gaps to match the shapes that you're familiar with good continuation refers to how we perceive continuous features like two waves added together rather than a series of blocks stuck together even though both are correct in 1988 psychiatrist and amateur astronomer william sheehan suggested that lol was simply seeing craters and other geological features close together and then he was performing a reconfiguration in his mind unconsciously to perceive canals in fact even in 1903 this was recognized as a strong possibility when joseph evans and edward maunder conducted visual experiments using schoolboy volunteers showing how the canals could arise as an optical illusion the other point to highlight is that low saw strange features on other planets too in particular on venus where he saw spokes in that case given the unusual configuration he was using of a tiny exit people size it has been suggested that lol was merely observing blood vessels in the back of his own eye this might explain what lower saw but why did he say confidently assert that it must be a martian civilization when he himself acknowledged that the canals were scarcely perceptible why did he fire his assistant douglas at the mere suggestion that it might be psychological in origin and why did he never back down in the face of growing evidence to the contrary people say to me are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics no i'm not i'm just looking to find out more about the world and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law that explains everything so be it that would be very nice to discover if it turns out it's like an onion with millions of layers and we're just sick and tired of looking at the layers then that's the way it is but whatever way it comes out its nature is there and she's going to come out the way she is and therefore when we go to investigate it we shouldn't pre-decide what it is we're trying to do except to find out more about it prior beliefs about mars and life in the universe perhaps played a role in laura's thinking first he was a product of his time and lived in an era when canals were an emerging technology thus one which naturally advanced aliens would surely use in that sense we should be cautious about modern day assumptions about how aliens might use artificial intelligence or solar sails technologies that we are currently developing but might be considered antiquated to a distant civilization but prior beliefs go deeper than this when it came to the question of life in the universe lol held the preconception that intelligent life was surely out there in 1895 he wrote now when we think that each of these stars is probably a solar system grander than our own we cannot seriously take ourselves to be the only minds in it all and from his biography that what we call life is an inevitable detail of cosmic evolution as inherent a property of matter from an eventual standpoint as gravitation itself indeed belief in alien life was power for the course in the late 19th century a viewpoint held by most of society and of course this remains a popular view today but as we've said many times on this channel it's not a position motivated by evidence because there is none what we have to understand is that prior beliefs can be dangerous beasts because of confirmation bias especially in science via the effect of experimenter's bias when an experimenter has a certain expectation for the results of an experiment they tend to give more weight to tests which agree with their preconception rather than disagree with them a classic example was shown by psychologist rosenthalen code in 1963 who gave two groups of students some rats to observe through a maze one group of the students which here represent our experimenters were told that their rats were bright whilst the other group were told that they were dull in other words the students formed prior beliefs before they actually collected any data despite the fact that rats were randomized each time their students consistently graded their rats in agreement with these preconceptions and when it comes to alien life we risk the same thing we as scientists have an obligation to be open-minded about the possibility of new discoveries including intelligent life but if we operate under the assumption the preconception that life is common then we risk perceiving evidence when none exists like if you're convinced that the world is dominated by ghosts because that's your preconception then every time the wind blows the curtains are little you're going to perceive that differently to someone who doesn't operate under such an assured prayer and this cuts both ways it's one of the reasons i'm not a fan of the popular adage is never aliens because it sets up a prior that forbids success in science we have to leave our preconceptions at the door just look at the evidence remember our history and consider the alternatives far better as i've said before to adopt a position of open-mindedness to both possibilities perhaps we're alone perhaps we're not let us seek the answers and settle the question that way instead the scientific method is the willingness to to admit you're wrong the willingness to abandon ideas that don't work finally why did lol refuse to accept new evidence against his hypothesis this is harder to answer my guess is that he simply had a stubborn heart in the twilight years of his life when evidence began to mount against him he had already invested enormous intellectual and financial resources into this idea as well as his namesake and reputation even famed astronomers are only human and in the end lol had gone so far down his path that he couldn't find his way back stubbornness is pervasive in science and it tempers with age this is one of the reasons why science thrives when new fresh perspectives arise from young scientists entering the field and challenging conventional thinking thinking that has often become so baked into the older generation that it hampers their creativity admitting that you're wrong in science and in life is a really difficult thing to do in fact it's one of the hardest things in my field of study exoplanets there are many examples of this playing out an infamous example is when astronomer peter van der kamp claimed that barnard's star hosted what would be the first ever exoplanet all the way back in the late 1960s the astronomical world was stunned by this staggering feat the first proof of planets beyond our sun but by 1973 astronomer george gatewood used improved equipment to show that this planet wasn't real soon after evidence mounted that van der kamp had been tricked by an artifact of the instrument and by 1976 even his successor swarthmore observatory was openly criticizing the claim van der kamp never accepted that he was wrong no matter how much evidence came against him much like lol he held on to that position until his dying breath in 1995. i could tell you many more tales of such stubbornness and signs but i want to highlight that there's another side to the coin and it's a perfect mirror to van der kamp because it's again the claim of what would have been the first exoplanet but now much later in 1991. that year astronomers andrew lynn and matt bales were studying pulsars and claimed the detection of a planet around psr b 1829-10 this 10 earth mass planet was claimed to have an orbital period of six months that's half of earth's year after the paper's publication though the authors realized they'd made a mistake and the planet wasn't real they hadn't correctly accounted for the earth's very slight eccentricity in their calculations andrew lynn was scheduled to present his work the annual meeting of the astronomical society that's a massive event with global attention der kamp he had a choice he could either go up there on that stage and defend the reality of his signal or he could admit that he was wrong andrew lynn did the latter and when he finished he was met with a standing ovation at the meeting an extremely rare event everyone realized how hard that must have been yet how crucial to the scientific process that act of courage truly was ironically in the very next talk alexander walshand stood up and announced what turned out to be the first real pulsar planets history might remember walshan as the foremost name in that field but for me lin stands out as an unsung hero in the story of science but she or someone like her will always be with us waiting for the right climate in which to flourish [Music] and so we come back to percival lol i don't think the man meant to mislead anyone but his refusal to listen to his peers means that he's now remembered as being on the wrong side of scientific history the truth is that no one not me not you not your greatest scientific hero is infallible all of us stumble and that doesn't make us flawed individuals just makes us human but lowell's legacy lives on through the establishment of the lowell observatory and his major financial contributions to astronomy undoubtedly a positive long-lasting legacy and perhaps in the end forcing the public to witness these events play out to watch a headline turn into a falsehood was a net good because it reminds us about how science works that hypotheses float up but only a few survive during a series of lectures in 1903 at mit lol said imagination is as vital to any advance in science as learning and precision are essential for starting points and on that front law's right imagination and open-mindedness are critical to the scientific endeavor new viewpoints us they push us forward in our thinking even if ultimately they end up being wrong but clearly imagination can also be the enemy if it goes too far in a valedictory editorial on the man the new york times remarked the present judgment of the scientific world is that he was too largely governed in his researches by a vivid imagination in the end lowell's imagination was perhaps akin to icarus an imagination that flew majestically for a while but eventually soared too high too precariously against the melting gaze of scientific evidence lol's story is an allegory and warning from history because he's not an anomaly claims of life and intelligence will continue to crop up every so often in general the scientists involved are not trying to mislead you but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be vigilant when a scientist gets excited about their hypothesis it's a little bit like being in love you want to shout it out on the rooftops enthusiasm to everybody who will listen to you but the danger of that is that you can become so entrenched so trapped in your own ideas that you can't see what's staring you right in the face the data and so this will happen again and again and again it's the cycle we are doomed to wade through for likely as long as we lack proof of alien life and so every day we must be cautious and skeptical aware that history has shown us that these spurious claims will constantly arise that we must wake up each day with clear eyes open minds and a healthy dose of skepticism so until the next video stay thoughtful stay curious all right space fans thank you so much for watching this video i've just finished the exhausting process of editing but i want to thank our new cool world's donors that is chad sota jason rocket marcus gillette and tina jeffco you guys are awesome thank you so much for supporting us so wherever you are in space and time have a great television rotation you

Channel: Cool Worlds

Views: 179,847

Keywords: Martian Canals, Mars NASA, Mars Perseverance, NASA Perseverance, Percival Lowell, Lowellian Mars, Mars Civilization, Mars Aliens, Victorian Aliens, Cool Worlds, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Astrobiology, David Kipping

Id: TpTJbtMFKAU

Length: 30min 54sec (1854 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 03 2021