As a kid in the 1960s and 70s, David Baron – like many others – was fascinated by Mars.
“There was a popular sitcom back then called “My Favorite Martian,” about an alien from the Red planet who crash-landed his flying saucer in California,” recalled Baron, a science writer based in Colorado. “There were Martians in the comics and Martians in Sci Fi. And now, as an adult, as a science writer, I came to wonder where all that came from.”
For his latest book, The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn of the Century America, Baron looked into one source of that fascination: a Harvard astronomer named Percival Lowell, who came from the same textile family the city of Lowell, Mass., was named after.
In the early 1900s, Lowell aimed his telescope at Mars and thought he could see a network of straight lines on the planet’s surface. He decided they were intentionally-made canals.
“Percival Lowell came up with this elaborate theory,” Baron said, “that the planet was running out of water and that the civilization on Mars, in order to survive, had to create this global irrigation network. And that's what the canals were.”
“It really became almost accepted fact.”
To bolster this theory, Lowell hired two western Massachusetts researchers: David Todd, an astronomy professor at Amherst College, and his wife, the writer and editor Mabel Loomis Todd.
The Todds managed to get a giant telescope from Amherst College dismantled and moved to South America, for a better look at Mars while it was passing close to Earth. David Todd took about 10,000 photos.
“These were tiny photographs, just a quarter inch across. But that was the best that astrophotography could do at the time,” Baron said. “They touted them as incontrovertible proof that these fine straight lines on Mars were really there.”
This belief moved from the tabloids to mainstream media, like the Wall Street Journal, and then to the culture at large.
“There were pastors sermonizing about the Martians in church. Alexander Graham Bell said he was totally on board. He saw no doubt that there was a civilization on Mars,” Baron said. “It really became almost accepted fact.”
But eventually, the astronomy community took down the theory and determined that what Lowell and the Todds actually saw were optical illusions.
“The eye has a tendency to see patterns where there aren't any, and the eye might be connecting dots as straight lines,” Baron said.
Lowell’s reputation never recovered; he died in 1916. David Todd lost his Amherst job due to mental illness. Mabel Loomis Todd focused on her literary profession, becoming the first publisher of Emily Dickinson’s work.
"I think we're kidding ourselves if we think it's going to be some magical solution to Earth's problems.”
But despite how it all ended, Baron said, the Mars craze had a huge impact on the culture’s imagination for years to come. Even today, wealthy celebrities such as Elon Musk continue to focus on reaching Mars.
But Baron said it’s important to remember the mistakes humans have made in this obsession.
“The idea that Mars had this utopian society 100 years ago turned out to be pure illusion. We were projecting onto the planet what we wished were there. I think we're doing the same thing today,” he said.
“I'm actually in favor of sending astronauts to Mars and maybe someday colonizing Mars. But I think we're kidding ourselves if we think it's going to be some magical solution to Earth's problems. It's not.”
Case study in how false ideas spread
And Baron said the whole episode is a case study on how unproven scientific theories – from canals on Mars to the linking of vaccines and autism – can take hold, especially during the age of social media.
“The cautionary part is just how easy it is for false ideas to spread, how easy it is for us as individuals to convince ourselves that things are true because we so wish they were true,” he said, “and to look at the evidence in a biased way to that supports our beliefs and to to discard anything that goes against us.”
Baron’s book, The Martians, has been on best-of-the-year lists in The New Yorker, Time Magazine, and The New York Times.