Labels: text | screenshot OCR: Later, he added, "There are undoubtedly plants FIRST OBSERVATIONS on Mars, as well as animals. Can you imagine: THE CANALS OF MARS trees with red foliage, red forests, and red prairies! Apart OBSERVATIONS OF SPACE PROBES from this, the world of Mars, if we were suddenly transported there, would surely not seem very different from our own. Thus its inhabitants, if there are any, might resemble us in a most extraordinary manner." As we can clearly see, to compensate for the lack of direct observation, Flammarion relied heavily on his imagination. In one of his novels he wrote, "The inhabitants of Mars are much superior to those of Earth, in their organization, in the number and acuity of their senses, and in their intellectual faculties. Thanks to their nutritive atmosphere, the Martians are free of any vulgar need to feed themselves. Their cities are infinitely more beautiful, their sciences infinitely more advanced than our own. Murder is unknown among them. There, humanity, not having any material needs, has never experienced-even in the most primitive ages-plundering or war. The Martians' ideas and feelings are of an entirely intellectual order." In 1918, new breakthroughs put an end to these farfetched notions. One astronomer, for example, stated that the average temperature on Mars was -24 C. Flammarion replied, "You pain me greatly when you assert that this neighboring world is a lifeless globe of ice suspended in a death-like solitude." MARS BETAT
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