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Why we're fascinated with Mars The planet most like Earth has had star-quality PR

Posted on: Wednesday, 27 August 2003, 06:00 CDT

To the layman, most planets in the Earth's solar system possess no special magic. If the planets have a reputation at all -- Neptune, anyone? -- they are known only in the vaguest of terms.

Pluto is the cold one, Mercury the hot one. Venus is the cloudy place where (according to John Gray, Ph.D.) women come from.

Pretty boring, right? But Mars, now there's a planet with some good PR.

Saturn may be prettier and Jupiter may be bigger, but Mars is the famous and fearsome red planet named after the Roman god of war, and it has obsessed, amused and occasionally terrified Earthlings since the Babylonians first spotted it in 400 BC.

Paradoxically, Mars is also the planet most like Mother Earth, which adds to the fascination. It appears rocky, harsh and uninviting, and yet it has conditions that may sustain life as we know it. It's an exotic place tens of millions of miles away, and yet -- astronomically speaking -- it's a planetary neighbor that this summer has come unusually close to home.

Tomorrow, the two planets' orbits will bring Mars and Earth within 34.646418 million miles of each other -- closer together than they've been in 60,000 years.

Neanderthals roamed the Earth at the time of Mars' last close encounter. But in modern times, particularly the 20th century, Mars became a cultural touchstone as the star of countless science fiction movies and books, and as the home to the little green men of our dreams and nightmares.

In the popular culture lexicon, no other planet has even come close to capturing our imagination the way Mars has. Put it this way: Would anyone have watched a TV show called My Favorite Saturnian? Would 1938 radio listeners have cowered in fear if Orson Welles had told them Earth had been invaded by Jupiterians?

Of course not. The red planet has a special place in our lives even though, as Elton John once said, Mars ain't no kind of place to raise your kids -- in fact, it's cold as hell.

Or, with an average temperature of -81 degrees Fahrenheit, perhaps it is even colder.

With its mysterious terrain and seemingly limitless supply of storylines, Mars (and/or Martians) have starred in films from 2000's mainstream Red Planet and Mission To Mars to such little-seen pictures as 1962's The Three Stooges In Orbit, 1964's Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and 1989's Over-Sexed Rugsuckers From Mars, in which a woman gives birth to a vacuum cleaner with the head of a doll.

Mars has also played a major role in the works of science- fiction heavyweight Edgar Rice Burroughs, who penned A Princess of Mars, Swords of Mars, The Chessmen of Mars, The Gods of Mars, Synthetic Men of Mars, A Fighting Man of Mars and John Carter of Mars.

Though the Mars candy corporation was named after founder Frank C. Mars in 1911, it capitalized on its spacey name with the slogan, "The best candy on Earth comes from Mars."

The renowned Syracuse University pop culture professor Robert Thompson remembers eating Mars bars and chewing giant gumballs called Sputniks back in the 1960s, the decade that saw the first humans land on the moon.

Although Thompson remembers Mars being seen as the last frontier in the early gee-whiz days of the space program, he thinks subsequent years of highly publicized space exploration have given the planet a been-there, done-that feeling. To Thompson, Mars is so last millennium.

"We've domesticated Mars," Thompson said. "We've had robots jumping around up there. There'll be a Starbucks up there before long."

To skywatchers, though, the planet retains its mystique.

"It does pique people's interest, and we've had a lot of visitors coming in. They've heard about it. They want to see it. They don't want to miss it," said Patrick McQuillan, planetarium director at the Museum of Science and History.

If you view Mars through an ordinary telescope in the next few days, you won't see the huge, rust-colored disc made famous by Hollywood and NASA. You'll find an image much smaller and less detailed than that, but you will be able to make out the planet's melting polar ice caps, which look like white mold atop a Sunkist orange.

To First Coast amateur astronomer and sci-fi fan Rich Vollberg, the planet looks like a potential home.

"Eventually we've got to move off this planet and head out to the stars," Vollberg said, "and what better place to start at than our closest neighbor, which is Mars, which has somewhat of an atmosphere and probably could be terraformed into a livable space."

Which means someday Mars could be a kind of place to raise your kids.

Think of it! Your condo on Mars could be perched on the edge of Valles Marineris, a canyon system that dwarfs our piddly Grand Canyon. Or your home could sit nestled beneath Olympic Mons, a volcano several times higher than Mt. Everest.

Of course, it'll take you a little while to get there (six months, if you're lucky), but now seems like the perfect time to go - - Mars won't be this close again until the year 2287.

Nick Marino can be reached at (904) 359-4367 or via e-mail at nmarino@jacksonville.com.

'Almost impossible to miss'

All you have to do to see Mars, according to MOSH planetarium director Patrick McQuillan, is look to the east-southeast around 9:30 tonight. The view should remain basically the same for the next several days.

"It's almost impossible to miss if you look over that way," McQuillan said, even with the naked eye.

The planet will look like a star that's brighter (and redder) than usual. Binoculars will help, telescopes will help more.

For a telescopic view, join McQuillan at the Museum of Science and History. The MOSH is hosting a 45-minute planetarium program called The Mars Show tomorrow and Saturday, after which people can climb onto the museum's roof to see the planet through a telescope.

The program runs from 8:30 to 10 p.m. both nights, and admission is $3. Call (904) 396-7062.

How did Mars get so close to the Earth?

The two planets are now in what's called a "perihelic opposition." According to Tony Phillips, writing for the NASA Web site, "Perihelic means Mars is near perihelion -- its closest approach to the sun. (The orbit of Mars, like that of all planets, is an ellipse, so the distance between the sun and Mars varies.) Opposition means that the sun, Earth and Mars are in a straight line with Earth in the middle. Mars and the sun are on opposite sides of the sky. When Mars is at opposition and at perihelion -- at the same time -- it is very close to Earth."

-- In movies, on TV (that's Ray Walston, below) or just by the numbers, there are numerous bits of Martian trivia to help you win many bar bets. Lifestyle, C-1

On Jacksonville.com: For more information, see our special multimedia package, including audio tips on viewing Mars.

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