Word: planets
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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That any Martian creatures, turtle-like or otherwise, will be discovered during the current Mars missions seems highly unlikely. Mariner 9, mapping the planet with its twin TV cameras and using ultraviolet and infra-red sensors to probe the surface and the atmosphere, will never come close enough in its far-ranging 860-mile by 10,600-mile orbit to photograph any life forms. Although the Russians have announced that their Mars 2 lander carried a Soviet pennant to the Martian surface, they have been silent about the performance of any life detectors or other instruments it might have carried...
Nonetheless, Mariner 9 has already added important new findings to man's knowledge of Mars. Near the south pole, one of the few areas where Mariner's cameras have been able to peer through the huge dust storm that still obscures much of the planet, the surface is also remarkably smooth, leading some scientists to theorize that the region was scoured clean by glaciers as the polar cap grew during Martian winters and then receded again. If glaciers were indeed responsible, their presence would indicate that there is more water in the polar cap (which is composed largely of frozen...
Although few expect to find life on the face of either planet (atmospheric pressure on Jupiter's still-unfathomed surface would probably be too high, and temperatures at the surface of Venus are more than 800° F., hot enough to melt lead) there is a possibility that organisms may have evolved at levels of the atmospheres where temperatures and pressures are moderate. The irrepressible Sagan has speculated that one form of Jovian life might be large, ballasted, gasbag-like creatures that swallow up organic matter as they float through...
...fact, after the newly invented telescope showed man that the planets were not simply flecks of light, it became quite fashionable to regard all of them as inhabited. The 18th century astronomer Johann Elert Bode, author of Bode's Law (each planet is roughly twice as far from the sun as the previous one), contended that the same mathematical proportions held for the spirituality of their inhabitants. Thus, by Bode's reckoning, Martians, on the fourth planet from the sun, were considerably more spiritual than the people on the third (earth...
Although their thinking may well reflect planetary chauvinism, most scientists believe that life, whatever its form, can begin only on a planet or one of its moons; it is inconceivable to them that it can evolve among the molecules floating in space or within the nuclear fires of stars. But are there any planets outside the solar system? The capability of detecting a planet in orbit around even the sun's nearest stellar neighbor is beyond the power of the largest optical telescopes, but many astronomers are convinced that there are billions of planets in the observable universe...