One of the cooler blogs out there is Ironic Sans by David Friedman (the same guy who made scientific Valentine cards). He’s started a new blog called SundayMagazine.org, where he posts and discusses old issues of the New York Times Sunday Magazine from the ancient archives.
In his first one, he found quite the catch:
How cool is that? The article is about a lettered French scientist speculating about what life would be like on other planets. David has a PDF of the article as well, which is an absolute delight to read. How wonderful to see something like that; an apparently scientifically-minded article, but free to have fun and take the reader to a totally different place than what they might expect!
It’s inspiring, in fact. Given that kind of freedom today, I wonder what other famous scientists of today would write about.
April 24th, 2010 at 8:24 am
There are Ferengi on Mars?
April 24th, 2010 at 8:26 am
So Mars is inhabited by Ferengis who have apparently overcome their capitalist tendencies enough that their health care typically provides radical breast augmentation. That’s my caption, anyway.
April 24th, 2010 at 8:51 am
OK so this isn’t accurate .we know that there is no life on Mars or Venus . But people in 1912 din’t . This was about 48 years before space probes were launched to Mars and Venus . The only way to see Mars and Venus in 1912 was thro telescopes and even in the most powerful you can’t see the surfaces of ether planet (a second problem with seeing Venus surface is the cloud cover that never clears) . So I think I can forgive people who thought that this may be the way Mars and Venus were back then. But now that we have seen and maped Mars and Venus surfaces some one printing this would have to be some one who got an F in Science and Astronomy and Phill would no doubt put on this site.
April 24th, 2010 at 9:11 am
They’d probably write about how the universe is trying to kill us. Perhaps even collect the articles into a book with a title like Death from Above or Destruction from the Skies. Maybe with a whimsical exclamation point.
April 24th, 2010 at 9:27 am
I would love to see a more legible version of that article.
April 24th, 2010 at 9:42 am
Not just Ferengi, but Jar Jar Binks.
I think James Cameron stole some of his ideas for Pandora.
April 24th, 2010 at 10:36 am
“Given that kind of freedom today, I wonder what other famous scientists of today would write about.”
You could always ask Simon Conway Morris: http://www.amazon.com/Lifes-Solution-Inevitable-Humans-Universe/dp/0521603250
It’s interesting how the review scores for that book differ on the UK and US Amazon sites.
April 24th, 2010 at 10:51 am
We still have two years! Comon, everyone! Don’t give up now!
April 24th, 2010 at 11:16 am
Hmmm, famous scientists making speculative leaps,,,how about Carl Sagan and Contact?
Or David Brin and the Uplift series(ok, David may not be famous for his science, but he is a scientist and famous as a SciFi writer).
Too bad Einstein wasn’t prone to public speculation. He seemed stuck in his reality rut,,,
Gary 7
April 24th, 2010 at 11:24 am
Dr. Sagan used to wax poetic about hunters and floaters in Jovian atmospheres all the time.
April 24th, 2010 at 11:31 am
sir, i HIGHLY suggest you visit the site i’ve linked below, if this sort of thing interests you…
http://www.paleofuture.com/
April 24th, 2010 at 11:50 am
There was a great role-playing game, Space:1889, that was based on the Jules Verne/H.G. Wells/Edgar Rice Burroughs view of our solar system. Stalwart British adventurers fighting the corrupt princes of Mars, exploring the steaming jungles of Venus, dealing with the mysterious and reclusive Selenites, and always stopping for tea. Not to mention foiling the agents of the Kaiser at every turn.
Good stuff.
April 24th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
We know nothing of the sort. Proposed refugia for bacteria analogs are the high atmosphere on Venus and underground on Mars. The methane observations on the later means either 1) liquid water (for serpentinization) 2) active geology (so again liquid water) 3) life. Liquid water is synonymous with life here on Earth.
We do know that the habitability (potential biomass production capability) are louse on both, tho’.
April 24th, 2010 at 1:20 pm
If you like this sort of thing you will really appreciate Christiaan Huygens speculative treatise on life on other planets “Cosmotheoros” written in 1698! There is a translation here: http://www.phys.uu.nl/~huygens/cosmotheoros_en.htm#Earlier%20speculatioons . He speculates that life exists on all planets (including Jupiter and Saturn) as well as around other stars and makes predictions about how that life might differ from us. The one thing that bothers me about this work is that the fundamental root of his reasoning on this issue is religious, i.e. he believes that life must exist on other planets because that would give greater glory towards god. When he identifies potential problems with the possibility of life on another planet, he speculates on what mechanisms might counteract this problem, rather than accepting the possibility that life might not exist there. But it is an amazing work and also contains a section on his calculation of the distance towards stars based on there brightness. He calculates that sirius is 27,664 AU distant, which is .44 light years, or about 1/20th the actual distance. However, he also presumes that Sirius is the same brightness as the sun when in fact it is 25 times as bright so a pretty impressive measurement nonetheless!
April 24th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
If you enjoyed that, you’ll LOVE this:
“The Astounding World of the Future”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJjUVIIYptE&feature=related
A world where ‘ro-buts’ provide a life of comfort and leisure!
(The grandma scene cracks me up!)
April 24th, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Why’s everything black & white on Mars and Venus?
Such advanced civilizations, you’d think would have color photos.
April 24th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
I suppose that scientists can speculate on anything as long it is reasonable like the great Carl Sagan.
April 24th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Giordano Bruno would have gladly died for freedom such as that (apologies for being ironic!)
April 24th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
“Conditions Resemble Those on Earth … ”
Yet another myth skewered by science, but to be fair to people of the time it was an interesting idea – and without such ideas there would never be an interest to visit those worlds to discover what was there. With what we know today it should be possible to kill off many of the myths without even visiting the planets, but I’m glad we can actually make it there – there is so much more learned that way.
April 24th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
It’s too bad they were wrong…sentient life or no, just imagine how different life today would be if Mars and Venus really were habitable by humans with their own native lifeforms. Lifestyles, population demographics, culture, politics, (and xenobiology!)…how great would it be if we were spread out on three different planets right now?
April 24th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
“It’s inspiring, in fact. Given that kind of freedom today, I wonder what other famous scientists of today would write about.”
Please Phil, isn’t one Richard Hoagland in the world more than enough?
April 24th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
There was a funny depiction del Jardin des Plantes in 1912 on the comic book series Adèle Blanc-Sec by french artist Tardis. It was steampunk before it was fashionable…
April 24th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
There is long and continuing history of Scientists writing Science Fiction :
Isaac Asimov was a scientist, chemist to be precise & usually had great science in his SF stories aswellas writing many science fact books too.
Then there’s Robert L. Forward physicist and author (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Forward), Carl Sagan, Fred Hoyle an astrophysicist who also wrote a number of SF novels (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud) among many other examples of scientist-SF authors.
This goes all the back to possibly the very first SF story ever, Somnium which was written around 1620-1630 by a certain scientist name Johannes Kepler. See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somnium_(Kepler)
I agree with # 20 Party Cactus & # 13. Torbjörn Larsson, OM in their comments too.
April 24th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
13. Torbjörn Larsson, OM Says:
“we know that there is no life on Mars or Venus.” [quoting # 3. mike burkhart] We know nothing of the sort. Proposed refugia for bacteria analogs are the high atmosphere on Venus and underground on Mars.
Ben Bova wrote a series of novels – the Grand Tour series : (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Tour_(novel_series) )
set in the solar system pretty much as we know it today which speculates on and features life on (in?) Jupiter, living in the clouds and on the surface of Venus even having the rings of Saturn being alive and more!
That aside :
@20. Party Cactus Says:
It’s too bad they were wrong…sentient life or no, just imagine how different life today would be if Mars and Venus really were habitable by humans with their own native lifeforms. Lifestyles, population demographics, culture, politics, (and xenobiology!)…how great would it be if we were spread out on three different planets right now?
Indeed. As I understand it this may have been the case early in our solar systems history when our Sun was dimmer. Life might have arisen on Mars and Venus and Earth around the same time. Then as the Sun warmed Venus underwent a runaway greenhouse effect and turned into the hellish inferno it is today. While Mars being too small lost its atmosphere and possibly all chance of hosting life.
If only Venus was located where Mars is instead and Mars had more mass. If only..
April 24th, 2010 at 9:10 pm
The noses of the Martians would be big open nostrils in order to maximize air flow, not long and thin. There was a monster flick from the fifties, called ‘It’ or something, where the martian creature was like this- he absorbed water for a living, killing astronauts for their H2O. Blue eyes? Not hardly. What, are they all Aryans (Mars equivalent to Ares…)?
My fave, though, is the sand-shark from the original Outer Limits, who has a taste for human blood (not enough iron, eh mate?), and big lobster claws. Loved the teeth.
JT
April 24th, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Ok I screwed up when I said no life on Mars and Venus I ment multiceller life forms I have to admit there could be microbes on both planets. Today I think we have to look outside the Solar System for intelegent life forms .And scifi contues to give us weird,scary,and some times firendly aliens.One question where the lgm or bem.(little green men,bug eyed monsters,what aliens used to be dipicted as in early scifi)
April 24th, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Phil, my grandfather left me a whole archive of old Scientific American magazines he had collected for a few decades. The ones from the 30′s are amazing. Much speculation about life on the moon.
I wish I had the resources to scan all of these or something.
April 24th, 2010 at 11:37 pm
@mike burkhart: I absolutely guarantee that there are microbes on Mars – but they came from earth (thank you rovers). I have no idea what microbes they would be (though fecal coliform bacteria and tetanus are pretty safe bets) and whether or not they are still viable, but they’re there. I’m inclined to believe they’re not viable thanks to the UV exposure.
@Andy #18: Unfortunately, Bruno was destined to sing The Police’s “I burn for you” … OK, enough morbid jokes for now. Tune in tomorrow – same bat time, same bat channel.
@Gary: Einstein was full of speculation. Do you remember the “Unified Theory”? Well, that was only one such speculation …
April 25th, 2010 at 12:41 am
OT Phil, have you seen the news of the meteorite in Israel? I bet it’s fake…
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1164994.html
April 25th, 2010 at 9:03 am
28. MadScientist
“@Gary: Einstein was full of speculation. Do you remember the “Unified Theory”? Well, that was only one such speculation …”
I have trouble thinking of mathematical statements as speculation. What’s so speculative about E=MC^2 ?
Gary 7
April 25th, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Wet Blanket Here –
Has anyone considered what the implications of this article are for our current state of understanding?
If an expert opinion from 100 years ago can be so far off, what will our expert opinions look like 100 years from now?
April 25th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
@Party Cactus
“How great would it be if we were spread out on three different planets right now?”
The answer depends on one’s opinion of humanity.
April 25th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
Lucky only earth is populated with intelligent beeings like us, if not there would only be more wars and worries im sure and the last thing we need is more crazy religions. And we would be in a terribly bad position strategicly. Exept for against the venusians we would own them, unless they allied themselfs with the horrific Martians. But then again we have superman so im sure it would be ok as long as they dont know about the cryptonite. Oboy! im drifting away here, good night!
April 25th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
“Given that kind of freedom today, I wonder what other famous scientists of today would write about.”
I thought that was what Lawrence Krauss is all about.
April 26th, 2010 at 6:47 am
Isn’t there a show on Discovery that’s promoting itself as “Steven Hawking speculates about Xenobiology”?
April 26th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Whats with the big boobed Ferengis ? I thought Ferengi woman were supposed to be naked.
April 29th, 2010 at 11:52 am
I’ve read this- the martians have huge chests to account for their huge lung capacity, given the thin atmosphere. I don’t remember much else from the original, though, just that one detail.