Who disputed the presence of canals on Mars?

Though Schiaparelli’s canali and Lowell’s irrigation canals may have looked fascinating on paper, most astronomers were not able to see them through their telescopes.

To settle the debate about the existence of these canals, Edward Maunder, a British astronomer, and Joseph Evans, the headmaster of a prestigious school in England, conducted an experiment in 1903. With the help of a group of schoolboys, they were able to show that the lines astronomers seemed to have seen on Mars were most likely optical illusions, or the tricks our eyes play on us! (Have you noticed that when you look at closely-spaced markings placed just outside the limits of your vision, you are sometimes able to see them as lines?)

A.E. Douglass, Lowell’s assistant at his observatory, too began to grow concerned about the influence of these illusions on their astronomical observations. But Lowell continued to believe the canals he had seen on Mars were real, and Douglass eventually had to leave his job!

Meanwhile, Alfred Wallace (a British biologist and explorer famous for his theory of evolution by natural selection – an honour he shares with Charles Darwin) also dismissed Lowell’s theories about intelligent beings on Mars in his book Is Mars Habitable? published in 1907.

Soon after, even astronomers who had initially supported the canal theory, like Eugene Antoniadi, observed Mars through better telescopes, and argued that there were no canals on Mars.

Picture Credit : Google

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