Por que as pessoas tendem a falar em "Marcianos", ao invés de, por exemplo, "Saturnianos" ou "Jovianos", quando se fala em vida extraterrestre...? Historicamente, sempre se pensou que Marte era o planeta onde seria mais provável encontrar vida. Este artigo de David Catling na Astrobiology Magazine descreve alguns exemplos sobre como Marte foi abordado na literatura.
Abaixo, a visão de Marte nas Viagens de Gulliver, de Jonathan Swift:
"Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), the great Irish writer and satirist, makes a curious reference to Mars's satellites in Gulliver's Travels. In the book, astronomers on the fictional island of Laputa (whose king is fond of solving mathematical problems) are said to have discovered two satellites around Mars. Swift details the orbital mechanics with reference to Kepler's laws.
Part III, Chapter 3:
"[The astronomers] have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the center of the primary planet exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half; so that the squares of their periodical times are very near in the same proportion with the cubes of their distance from the center of Mars, which evidently shows them to be governed by the same law of gravitation that influences the other heavenly bodies."
Mars does have two moons - Phobos, the inner satellite, and Deimos, the outer one. By they were not discovered until 1877, by the American astronomer Asaph Hall. Was the assumption of two satellites just a lucky guess on Swift's part? And was it also coincidental that he correctly guessed that the inner satellite orbited Mars in less than a day? (Phobos has an orbital period of 0.32 of a day; Deimos 1.26 of a day).
Kepler had speculated that Mars had two moons, and Swift was almost certainly aware of this. Kepler based his speculation on naive mathematical intuition: because Venus had no moon and Earth had one moon, Mars must have two moons as an outwards progression from the sun."
E existem outros artigos da mesma revista sobre Marte no rádio e no cinema.
Fonte imagem AQUI
