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Martians

(21 posts) (7 voices)

Started 2 years ago by Kodie
Latest reply from Jabster

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Kodie
Member

Hi. This is really a history question. It seems not so long ago, people believed there were martians, little green men and all that sort of stuff, and naturally feared them. I want to know how popular this really was and was it more about a mix of other things, like red scare, the space race, and the kinds of science fiction or graphic novel that replaced earthly type enemies in the age of industry and World Wars with aliens?

It seems like in my childhood, the 1970s, martians were kind of like Santa Claus or the tooth fairy, or some other childhood character that seemed real until you grew out of it, fun for a cartoon but not real, while I have the notion that prior to reaching the moon (and how much earlier?), people thought of space as mysterious and full of mysterious life forms. Does alien speculation go very far back in history or occur with industrialization over the last century or so? If the former, in what ways does the speculation or ideation occur? I'm also not sure why people fixated on Mars particularly and none of the other named planets. Maybe the moon, but not after we checked it out. Seems like going ahead and checking it out makes everyone know stuff and not be afraid of the outer space bogeyman kidnapping them as a form of grocery shopping. Is this space alien fear (in the era of interest) more of a Western thing, a USAn thing, or what?

People still seem interested in life on Mars, now that we've been there in robot form, some kooks get the visit by the gray aliens, some conspiracy kooks still think Area 51 is something, the SETI watchers, or the panspermia or exogenesis thoughts, and at least a few of us consider scientifically that it's possible for life to exist elsewhere in the universe, while some of us have categorized aliens equally improbable (if I'm understanding correctly) as deities and the regular bullshit therein. Life in the universe is something people still obviously think about, but not like this whole era of Martians, that the kooks don't seem so marginalized to me as they are now, and more freely allowed to fear the worst.

TL;DR - Fear of Martians - when did it start and when did it sort of go away mostly?

Posted 2 years ago #
Nox
Member

As I understand it most people (by which I mean the public not astronomers) didn't consider other planets to be other planets until around the 1800's. The idea of little green men living on those orbs suspended above Earth probably wouldn't have even occurred to anyone. So fear of martians wouldn't make much sense in say the 1300's.

When did fear of martians start? I think the first actual shot was fired on October 30th 1938. But tensions had been building with Mars for awhile. Ever since the spread of basic knowledge about our solar system to the masses, and the sci-fi pulp novel replacing the western pulp novel in american literature.

Suddenly it isn't just Tribe B across the river with a different language. Now there is the potential for completely different sentient life forms. We don't know what's out there, so there could be anything (except that pretty much every alien we've envisioned is either humanoid or a variant of some animal on earth). And just for them to have gotten here implies a vast technological superiority (which if human history is any indication means we're in for some conquering and enslavement). Combine this with the natural xenophobia of humans, and thousands of black and white movies about alien invasions and it makes some sense that fear of martians (the posited residents of the planet next to us) would be among people's first reaction to the idea of other planets.

So when did it go away mostly? I'd say mostly with the demystifying of Mars. It's no longer that mysterious planet that might be the home of the little green men. Now it's just Mars. We've probed it, photographed it and cataloged it. Maybe there was once life on Mars. Maybe there is some microbial life on Mars we've yet to find. But there don't appear to be any little green men, at least not on the surface.

But that's just Mars, which I think only got so much hype because of it's proximity to us. But fear of aliens in general, I think there is still some of that. But much of it is no longer fear. There are people camped outside the Nevada Test and Training Range right now hoping the UFO will take them to Mars.

I'd put a lot of the positive spin that aliens have gotten on changing trends in science fiction. The traditional model is the aliens are always bad. They are either here to destroy our planet, steal our women and mate with them, abduct us as specimens for their cosmic zoo or put us in pods and replace us. Not a lot of common ground you can find with a being like that. It probably is not a coincidence that our first imagined encounters with other species emulate our historical first encounters with other human cultures. Second generation science fiction (I think there's a name for this but not sure what it is) allows an extraterrestrial to play a different role than evil galactic overlord. Now the aliens can be the good guys.

There's still sort of a rule that your main good guy has to be human (modern science fiction [let's call it third generation sci-fi] has branched out some from this premise). Human audiences relate better to human characters. But there's still plenty of room for nonhumans as sidekicks, shamans, or benevolent/neutral extras. Characters like Klaatu, Spock, E.T., Ford Prefect and Chewbacca introduced audiences to the idea that if aliens exist, meeting them might not be so scary.

Posted 2 years ago #
Kodie
Member

Thanks, Nox. I tried to look some up on the subject and you know, we've discussed here before, that life in the universe is seeming unlikely, life about as advanced as we are. I still feel that's to be discovered, possibly, or in some way, never known for sure, but as long as we're here, it's certainly not impossible for life to exist somewhere else - not as impossible as god, at least in a theoretical sense. It wouldn't be supernatural for it to be so. There's also renewed discussion regarding the speculation of aliens in a realistic preparedness sense - if they exist, they probably will not be friendly. I kind of think if we went to another planet that had life on it, we would be friendly... unless they were hostile, fearful, and tried to kill us. Then we'd set to imperializing the heck out of 'em, and mining their planet for resources. I sort of think a lot of the friendlier alien allies in fiction (and I never read or watch science fiction, so it's a guess) came from a civil rights mindset informing the writer, but also it's not impossible for us and an alien civilization to war at each other for a while and become allies in space later if one didn't obliterate the other. Hypothetically.

It was just interesting as I was thinking of it, that martian fear was kind of a fad or something, that as soon as information became available, most people stopped believing the non-true thing, probably transferred their need to fear something unknown to something else. The kooks are pretty marginalized whacks, so most alien thoughts now are to the realistic speculation side or fictional. I also knew astronomy has a long history, sailors and farmers figured out stars (for their uses, not what they might be) for a long time, but I'm always a little lost when it comes to what the public knew and how it manifests itself in fears, all in history, how people learned anything or how slow they were to learn what was known to a few. That's in general, so I appreciate the info.

Posted 2 years ago #
Nox
Member

No problem.

"It's certainly not impossible for life to exist somewhere else."

If we conclude that the Universe is infinite, that the processes which gave rise to life on Earth are natural, and that natural laws operate the same all over the Universe, it seems like almost a given that there must be life somewhere else.

Posted 2 years ago #
Jabster
Member

"If we conclude that the Universe is infinite, ..."

If we conclude that then not only is there life out there, there's someone who looks just like me, lives in the house just like mine and is typing out this exact same post as we speak ...

Posted 2 years ago #
Kodie
Member

If we conclude that then not only is there life out there, there's someone who looks just like me, lives in the house just like mine and is typing out this exact same post as we speak ...

There is, from my perspective. Well, nine minutes ago, not technically "as we speak."

Posted 2 years ago #
Jabster
Member

If it's infinite then there are also an infinite amount of "Jabsters" doing just what I'm doing.

... anyway back to the subject in hand. If the Universe is as at least as vast as we believe it is and the formation of life on Earth is, although unlikely, not special then I see no reason as to why complex life doesn't exist in other parts of the Universe. I would even go as far to say that from our current understanding I believe that other complex life forms exist but that's using believe in a different manner from I believe that the Earth orbits the Sun. What it really comes down is that we got to where we are in 4.5 billion years (give or take a bit) and I don't see any reason why this wouldn't have occured in other places in the Universe.

Posted 2 years ago #
UrsaMinor
Member

I think fear of Martians is one of your garden-variety historical accidents. Schiaparelli thought he saw "channels" on the Martian surface in the 1870s: Lowell took the ball and ran with it in the 1880s, building this elaborate picture of canals built by an advanced civilization on a slowly dying world. As far as I know, Lowell admired the Martians and never suggested that they might be hostile, and he waged quite a publicity campaign promoting the idea of Mars as an abode of intelligent life. H.G. Wells, who was looking to do nothing more than make a buck writing fiction in the late 1890s, needed someplace for his invaders to hail from when he was writing War of the Worlds, and Mars (as it then was thought to be) fit the bill very nicely.

H.G. Wells' 1898 novel is the first time that the Martians are described as hostile- those "vast and cool and unsympathetic" intellects. I don't think the novel had a particularly wide audience when it was first published. "Martians are the bad guys" had to wait until the 1938 radio dramatization before it became established as a cultural meme. So we start with an honest mistaken observation by Schiaparelli, spun into an elaborate science fantasy by Lowell, co-opted by the entertainment industry and put through two iterations by Mssrs. Wells and Wells (no relation).

Let's not forget, too, that during that whole period, the European powers were armed to the teeth and elbowing each other for living space on the continent, and elsewhere practicing the "right" of more technologically advanced people to exploit or exterminate any pesky primitive natives who stood between them and the resources they wanted. Ultimately, Wells' Martian invaders may be ourselves, viewed darkly through a mirror; they also represent the fear that in the larger scheme of things, we may be the pesky primitive natives to someone else's Enlightened Civilized Folk.

Posted 2 years ago #
drax
Member

The math would suggest that in a few of the parallel universes I am a clown made of candy, but in none of them am I dancing.

Posted 2 years ago #
Elemenope
Moderator

If it's infinite then there are also an infinite amount of "Jabsters" doing just what I'm doing.

This is simply not true. An infinity of space implies nothing except space; it could all be quite empty except for the local region we see as "the universe".

Posted 2 years ago #
Kodie
Member

The universe is infinite as long as you've brought a pencil with you.

Posted 2 years ago #
UrsaMinor
Member

An infinity of space implies nothing except space; it could all be quite empty except for the local region we see as "the universe".

This is true. However, if the infinite space is filled with matter and energy at the same density as the part that we can observe, then sooner or later you must get duplicates of finite subsets. There are only a finite number of ways that you can arrange finite system of elementary particles, and one of those ways is Jabster.

Posted 2 years ago #
Jabster
Member

@Elem

UM has basically covered the main point but they are some others. If the only thing in this infinite "space" is the Universe as we know it then the Universe is finite but space is not; if "space" and time are infinite then why is there only one Universe with a finite mass and not an infinite number of Universes. Of course you can get around this by saying that either time is not infinite or the Universe is somehow "special" i.e. it was created by an event that can only happen once in this infinite Universe (now if you wanted to find a good place to put god it's here).

Edit: The other one is if the Universe is finite in space but infinite in time (expanding the contracting) does this mean that Jabster has already lived this life and Jabster is due to live it again

The real conclusion is that this is just a variation on Olbers' paradox and maybe shows using mathematical terms like infinite to discuss reality isn't a good idea after all or maybe it is!

Posted 2 years ago #
Nox
Member

Maybe I should have used "space" instead of "the Universe" in that sentence. You can substitute it if it makes you feel better. My central point was pretty much what you said in post #7.

By the way, I'm not an astronomer or anything, but I find the idea of space having edges far more troubling than an extra Jabster.

Posted 2 years ago #
UrsaMinor
Member

I think the scientific concensus is that space doesn't have edges. It's closed shape, what they call 'finite but unbounded', the same property that the surface of a sphere exhibits.

Posted 2 years ago #
Ebon Badger
Member

Just to come back to the original topic, I found this article on Fortean Times about UFOs and ball lightening

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/225/unfriendly_fire_ball_lightning_and_ufos.html

I think the UFO stuff came to a peak in the 50s and early 60s, which is also when the Cold War was at its height. The Soviets were the first to send a man into space, and IIRC were the first to send a satellite up there as well. It didn't do much, just beeped. They called it Sputnik. Oh and scared the crap out of people who thought it likely that there was going to be a nuclear holocaust. So Hollywood cashed in by churning out naff b-movies and invasions from "up there". Martians, nympho ballcrushers from Venus, blobs from Pluto etc.

Posted 2 years ago #
Nox
Member

Thanks for the info Ursa.

It does raise some further questions though. If you travel far enough across the surface of a sphere you end up at your starting point. Does that happen in space? It isn't my place to second guess science, but it seems like if we are inside the universe we need to go through the sphere, not around the surface.

If it were somehow possible to map the curvature of space, compensate for it and fly in an actual straight line (I mean "straight line" in the fourth dimensional sense if that isn't a completely incoherent concept, obviously I'm not a physicist either), and you were doing so at a faster rate than the universe is expanding, what happens when you get to the "surface" of the sphere? Do you just come out the other side and not notice until you get back to your starting point? Or is it something more like the International Date Line where all matter eventually meets back up with itself?

EDIT/UPDATE:

This answers part of my question. Still trying to figure out the FLRW model.

Posted 2 years ago #
UrsaMinor
Member

If you travel far enough across the surface of a sphere you end up at your starting point. Does that happen in space? It isn't my place to second guess science, but it seems like if we are inside the universe we need to go through the sphere, not around the surface.

Science isn't sure yet, but is trying to determine the answer. There are a number of closed shapes that have different geometries; they fall broadly into the classes of "parallel lines never meet" and "any two lines will always meet". Space is unquestionably very flat on the local scale, so it is hard to make an observation that will distinguish these cases. The analogy here is Euclidean geometry- you can lay out a small triangle on the surface of a sphere the size of the Earth, and it's very difficult to measure the deviation between that triangle and a Euclidean one. Make a big enough triangle, though, and you can easily see that the internal angles add up to more than 180 degrees. That is the sort of measurement that scientists would love to make.

If you are at any point on the surface of a sphere and start walking in any direction, and continue to walk without deviating from your original heading, your path will complete a great circle and bring you back to your starting point. Several other closed shapes (not all of them restricted to two dimensions like the surface of a sphere) have this property.

As for traveling through the volume of the sphere (or its analog), that requires leaving the universe. Imagine that you're two-dimensional flatlander restricted to the surface of the sphere. The two-dimensional surface is your universe. By analogy, our three-dimensional universe may be a skin on a hyperdimensional object in a higher dimension to which we have no access. We're embedded in 3-space and nobody knows how to leave it.

Posted 2 years ago #
Nox
Member

Thanks again Ursa, that's actually much more helpful than any other explanation I could find online.

Posted 2 years ago #
Kodie
Member

I started thinking in terms of the infinite earlier, or at least more complicated than it looks. I had gotten into a discussion maybe 10 years ago online, give or take, about parallel universes, and while that was interesting, it was brought to my attention that the universe has to be singular, or that's what it means to be a UNI-verse. So, earlier tonight, I was trying to think of a boundary to this universe, which is difficult. It just becomes more infinite, but I come up on my own with more "first cause" ideas, and it doesn't (curiously) exclude the possibility of a god. !!! Get the nets and the shirt with the arms that buckle in the back. Luckily, it's just a thought exercise and have done no research on the subject whatsoever.

So we're looking at the small and larger and larger to what we currently name "the universe," and say that's all there is, and it's really huge, and it started we know not how. Prior, I'd been rooting for the idea that it expands and contracts regularly. I was thinking about time and human perception of time, how it can be fast and slow at the same time, even at the human scale. I perceived the universe as we call it as one of many similar to it, as bubbles in a bathtub, space could have edges like that, but it goes out really far. Or it may have no end, but that the huge entity we currently name the universe may be like a bubble, and oceans of space in between other bubbles, bubbles that occur regularly as things we can observe on earth starting and ending for reasons we can actually determine.

It became a lot easier to feel like a germ in a petri dish at this point. No, I don't smoke weed.

Posted 2 years ago #
Jabster
Member

"By the way, I'm not an astronomer or anything, but I find the idea of space having edges far more troubling than an extra Jabster."

That's probably because you've never meet me ...

Posted 2 years ago #

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