| MAPPING MARS Science, Imagination, and the Birth of a World Oliver Morton New York: Picador USA, 2002 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-00-716364-9 | ||||
| ISBN 0-312-24551-3 | 357pp. | HC/FCI | $30.00 | |
The Nineteenth Century saw routine trade and communication expand to worldwide scope. Navigation and timekeeping were already well-established; but the need for a standard coordinate system to locate all those far-flung vessels of commerce was acute. It fell to a meticulous man named Sir George Airy, Great Britain's Astronomer Royal, to preside over the adoption of such a standard: The meridian of Greenwich Observatory.
According to Oliver Morton's elegant account, the conference that selected Greenwich as the Prime Meridian over islands, mountains, and artifacts like the Great Pyramid — not to mention the vigorous opposition of the French — took place in 1884. Thus it was that Mars had a defined coordinate system before Earth, for its prime meridian of longitude dates from 1830. The site was chosen by two German astronomers, Wilhelm Beer and Johan von Mädler; it passes through a point in the dark region now known as Syrtis Major.
This book goes beyond the historical account of telescopic observations to explore the reasons for making maps of Mars. As Morton puts it on pages 20-21:
If the space age has opened new ways of seeing mere matter, though, it has also fostered a strange return to something reminiscent of the pre-Copernican universe. The life that Lowell and his like expected elsewhere has not appeared, and so the Earth has become unique again. The now-iconic image of a blue-white planet floating in space, or hanging over the deadly deserts of the moon, reinforces the Earth's isolation and specialness. And it is this exceptionalism that drives the current scientific thirst for finding life elsewhere, for finding a cosmic mainstream of animation, even civilization, in which the Earth can take its place. It is both wonderful and unsettling to live on a planet that is unique. |
Yet if the Earth is a single isolated planet, the human world is less constrained. The breakdown of the equation between planets and worlds works both ways. If there can now be planets that are not worlds, then there can be worlds that spread beyond planets—and ours is doing so. Our spacecraft and our imaginations are expanding our world. This projection of our world beyond the Earth is for the most part a very tenuous sort of affair. It is mostly a matter of imagery and fantasy. Mars, though, might make it real—which is why Mars matters. |
Mars is not an independent world, held together by the memories and meanings of its own inhabitants. But nor is it no world at all. More than any other planet we have seen, Mars is like the Earth. It is not very like the Earth. Its gravity is weak, its atmosphere thin, its surface sealess, its soil poisonous, its sunlight deadly in its levels of ultraviolet, its climate beyond frigid. It would kill you in an instant. But it is earthlike enough that it is possible to imagine some of us going there and experiencing this new part of our human world in the way we've always experienced the old part—from the inside. The fact that humans could feasibly become Martians is the strongest of the links between Mars and Earth. |
Drawing on historical records and interviews with many of the scientists investigating Mars, as well as poetry and novels of science fiction, Morton traces our ongoing efforts to unravel its mysteries, deftly explains the competing theories, and chronicles the gradual growth in coherence of our understanding of Mars as a place rather than just another distant rocky body circling the Sun. The mapping of surface features makes up a large part of those efforts, but geology and other sciences are at least as important to the goal — which is to figure out how Mars works. Our telescopes, our imaging satellites, now our rovers, have shown us awesome and intriguing landforms; and their geological basis (in cratering, magma flows, wind erosion, or whatever) is a formidable puzzle. But the key to Mars is water, or its absence.
Water. Science long ago revealed it as the prime prerequisite for life on Earth, the substance that makes up some 70 percent of our own bodies. Long before that, we understood the presence of water as vital for survival, on every level. Physical survival requires water to drink; social survival requires water for washing; spiritual survival requires water for baptism or other important rites. The survival of industrial technology demands water for all sorts of processes. The close presence of lakes, streams or ocean waves is a prized component of our dwelling places. Last, but far from least, water lubricates a wide variety of sporting activities: swimming, surfing, skiing and more.
Proof of the presence of substantial amounts of water on Mars would be a true revelation. It would endow that planet with the possibility of native life, as well as making it far more suitable for our sort of life to inhabit one day. (It might even provide a giant shrimp to every American, courtesy of Long John Silver's restaurants.1) That triune promise of discovery — that native life once existed on Mars; that it manages to hang on there today; and that Mars might soon support human habitation — is what drives our present probings of Mars (just as it drove past investigations).
Morton's book provides a clear, thorough and coherent account of those investigations and their developing results. But its greater worth is that it introduces us to the dedicated people who are producing those results. Not all of them are scientists; engineers like Bob Zubrin give the scientists their tools, and artists like Pat Rawlings provide the inspiration.
I would include Oliver Morton himself in that list of contributors. As well as describing the history of research into the nature of Mars, documenting current research programs, and bringing many of the researchers to life for us, Mapping Mars puts the entire effort in perspective. It is an excellent overview of the social and philosophical context for studying or visiting Mars: Not only what, where, when and how, but why. (Or why not. That context necessarily includes ethical and political considerations. As such, anyone writing on the subject must admit of the possibility that Mars will never be visited by humans.) It becomes clear in the later chapters of the book that Morton has "caught the Mars bug"; he wants to see people from Earth set foot on our neighboring planet. (That bias he admits in several places.) Nevertheless, he does not ignore the contrary viewpoints. The idea that the discovery of native life could lead to Mars being declared "off limits" is discussed, and the chance that political decisions might stop all space exploration is mentioned. Although in favor of the "Mars Direct" plan advocated by Bob Zubrin, he cites an essay by Patricia Nelson Limerick as an effective refutation of the "space exploration as renewing frontier" idea that Zubrin claims as motivation for Mars Direct.
Even the advocates for the reality2 of the "Face on Mars", who tend to claim absurdly that NASA is attempting to conceal its existence, are treated with significant respect.3
A section with 28 illustrations (15 in full color), a bibliography containing 109 entries and Morton's annotations on them, and a detailed index add to the value of the text. To sum up: Mapping Mars is thoroughly enjoyable and vastly informative. I recommend it highly.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.