The Canals of Mars
Errors on early maps of Mars led some people to be convinced that Mars harboured intelligent life
There are no canals on Mars and there never were. However, for a time during the late 19th and early 20th centuries this belief was widely held, due to false interpretations of what was being seen through telescopes and an unfortunate mistranslation.
The supposed canals of Mars
The blame for the error, although “blame” is probably a harsh word to use here, belongs to an Italian astronomer named Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835–1910) who took advantage of the relative closeness of Mars to Earth in 1877 to draw a map of the planet based on his observations.
Schiaparelli was well aware of the earlier observations by William Herschel (1738–1822) that revealed that the ice caps on the poles of Mars grew and shrank as the seasons passed, just as they did on Earth. Herschel had also spotted that the dark regions on the surface also changed in area, and his theory was that meltwater from the poles was causing huge floods. Other observers reckoned that the dark patches were forests or other vegetation that varied in area as the seasons changed.
With this mindset firmly established, Schiaparelli believed that he could trace lines that connected…