Those weird features on Mars recently surveyed by NASA’s super-powerful Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have uprooted Arthur C. Clarke’s view that vegetation might be at work on the red planet.

Back in 2001, I reported that Clarke saw in Mars Global Surveyor snapshots “extraordinary features” that couldn’t be explained. The noted science fact/fiction writer said signs of vegetation seem apparent. One image even showed what appeared to him looking like Banyan trees, he said.

In a bit of added humor, Clarke decided that Mars must be inhabited “by a race of demented landscape gardeners.”

Here are those stories:

http://www.space.com/peopleinterviews/clarke_mars_010601.html

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/clarke_mars_banyon_010709-1.html

But now MRO imagery has found that channels carved out by escaping gas form a “starburst” pattern, radiating out into feathery extensions.

At this week’s American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, Candice Hansen of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory detailed new looks at Mars morphology, reporting on “lace” and “lizard skin” and branching patterns called “spiders”.

Check out: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_003443_0980

Turns out that those Clarke Banyan tree-like features are similar channels carved into the ground, Hansen has advised me, adding: “Arthur C. Clarke writes great science fiction.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 12:39 pm and is filed under Science of Fiction, Space & Astronomy, Strange News, Technology, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.