The Mars Mystery: The Secret Connection Between Earth and the Red Planet Read online

  Also by Graham Hancock

  Journey Through Pakistan

  Ethiopia: The Challenge of Hunger

  AIDS: The Deadly Epidemic

  Lords of Poverty

  African Ark: Peoples of the Horn

  The Sign and the Seal: A Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant

  Fingerprints of the Gods

  The Message of the Sphinx (with Robert Bauval)

  Heaven’s Mirror (with Santha Faiia)

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  Part I The Murdered Planet

  1. Parallel World

  2. Is There Life on Mars?

  3. The Mother of Life

  4. The Janus Planet

  Part II The Mystery of Cydonia

  5. Close Encounter

  6. A Million to One

  7. The Viking Enigma

  8. Jesus in a Tortilla

  9. Face Staring Back

  10. Ozymandias

  11. Companions of the Face

  12. The Philosophers’ Stone

  13. Coincidences

  Part III Hidden Things

  14. Disinformation

  15. Camera Obscura

  16. Cities of the Gods

  17. The Feathered Serpent, the Fire-Bird, and the Stone

  Part IV The Darkness and the Light

  18. The Moon in June

  19. Signs in the Sky

  20. Apocalypse Now

  21. Earth Cross

  22. Fishes in the Sea

  23. Voyager on the Abyss

  24. Visitor from the Stars

  25. Bull of the Sky

  26. Dark Star

  Appendix: Diagrams

  Endnotes

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Mars Mystery is being published in the U.S. under my sole name, since I have been the main author and coordinator. Nevertheless, I feel it is important for readers to know that the book is a work of coauthorship. To be specific, I was the sole author of chapters 1 through 4 and chapters 18 through 26. My research assistant John Grigsby wrote chapters 5 through 16 (with contributions from Robert Bauval in chapter 16). Chapter 17 was largely written by me with contributions from John Grigsby and Robert Bauval.

  Because of the collective nature of this work I have chosen to adopt the “we” tone of voice throughout the story. When references are made to “our” previous publications I am speaking primarily of my book Fingerprints of the Gods, of Robert Bauval’s book The Orion Mystery, and of the book that Robert and I wrote together, The Message of the Sphinx.

  Thanks to Chris O’Kane of the Mars Project U.K., and to Simon Cox, for library and documentation research on our behalf. Special thanks also to Dr. Benny Peiser of Liverpool’s John Moores University, who kindly put his personal library at our disposal.

  I would like to add that a major part of the function of The Mars Mystery is to draw public attention to discoveries made by scientists around the world concerning the Mars anomalies and concerning the extremely grave and pressing issue of planetary cataclysms. Without the dedicated, groundbreaking work of these scientists, there would have been no book for us to write. We have attempted to report and represent their work fairly, wherever possible in their own words, but the overall conclusions that we have drawn are our own. Our role in this respect has been as synthesizers, connecting evidence and data from many different fields of research. It was only as we began to put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together that we ourselves became aware of the big picture and of the truly alarming implications that it has not only for the past of Earth but also for its future.

  Graham Hancock

  PART ONE

  The Murdered Planet

  1

  Parallel World

  ALTHOUGH separated by tens of millions of miles of empty space, Mars and Earth participate in a mysterious communion.

  Repeated exchanges of materials have taken place between the two planets—the most recent involving spacecraft from Earth that have landed on Mars. Likewise we now know that chunks of rock thrown off from the surface of Mars periodically crash into Earth. By 1997 a dozen meteorites had been firmly identified as having originated on Mars. They are known technically as SNC meteorites (after Shergotty, Nakhla, and Chassingy, the names given to the first three such meteorites found1) and researchers around the world are on the lookout for more.2 According to calculations by Dr. Colin Pillinger of the U.K. Planetary Sciences Research Institute, “100 tons of Martian material arrives on Earth each year.”3

  One of the Mars meteorites, ALH84001, was found in Antarctica in 1984. It contains tiny tubular structures that NASA scientists sensationally identified in August 1996 as “possible microscopic fossils of bacteria-like organisms that may have lived on Mars more than 3.6 billion years ago.”4 In October 1996 scientists at Britain’s Open University announced that a second Martian meteorite, EETA 79001, had also been found to contain the chemical signatures of life—in this case, astonishingly,

  organisms that could have existed on Mars as recently as 600,000 years ago.5

  LIFE-SEED

  Two probes were launched by NASA in 1996—Pathfinder, a lander-rover, and Mars Global Surveyor, an orbiter. Further missions are budgeted to follow through 2005, when an attempt will be made to scoop up a chunk of the surface rock or soil of Mars and then return the sample to Earth.6 Russia and Japan are also sending probes to Mars to undertake a range of scientific tests and experiments.

  Longer term are plans to “terraform” the Red Planet. This would involve the introduction of greenhouse gases and simple bacteria from Earth. Over a period of centuries the warming effects of the gases and the metabolic processes of the bacteria would transform the Martian atmosphere, making it habitable by more and more complex species—either introduced or locally evolved.7

  How likely is it that humanity will be able to fulfill this plan to “seed” Mars with life?

  Apparently it is only a matter of finding the money. The technology to do the job already exists.8 Ironically, however, the existence of life on Earth itself remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of science. Nobody knows when, why, or how it began here. It just seems to have exploded suddenly, out of nowhere, at a very early stage in the planets history. Although Earth is thought to have formed 4.5 billion years ago, the most ancient surviving rocks are younger than that—about 4 billion years old. Traces of microscopic organisms have been found going back almost 3.9 billion years.9

  The transformation of inanimate matter into life is a miracle that has never repeated itself, one that even the most advanced scientific laboratories cannot replicate. Are we really to believe that such an amazing piece of cosmic alchemy could have occurred by chance in just the first few hundred million years of Earth’s long existence?

  SOME OPTIONS

  Professor Fred Hoyle of Cambridge University does not think so. His explanation for the origin of life on Earth so soon after the formation of the planet is that it was imported from outside the solar system on great interstellar comets. Some fragments collided with Earth, releasing spores that had been held in suspended animation in the cometary ice. The spores spread out and took root all around the newly formed planet, which was soon densely colonized by hardy microorganisms. These slowly evolved and diversified, eventually producing the immense range of life-forms that we know today.10

  An alternative and more radical theory, supported by a number of scientists, is that Earth could have been deliberately terraformed 3.9 billion years ago, just as we are now preparing to terraform Mars. This theory presuppose
s the existence of an advanced star-faring civilization—or more likely, many such civilizations—distributed throughout the universe.

  Most scientists do not see the need for comets or aliens. Their theory, the mainstream view, is that life arose on Earth accidentally, without any outside interference. They further argue, on the basis of widely agreed calculations about the size and composition of the universe, that there are probably hundreds of millions of Earth-like planets spread randomly across billions of light years of interstellar space. They point out that it is improbable, amid such legions of suitable planets, that life would have evolved only on Earth.

  WHY NOT MARS?

  In our own solar system, the first planet out from the Sun, tiny, seething Mercury, is believed to be incongenial to any imaginable form of life. So too is Venus, the second planet from the Sun, where concentrated sulphuric acid pours down twenty-four hours a day from poisonous clouds. Earth is the third planet from the Sun. The fourth, Mars, is indisputably the most Earth-like in the solar system. Its axis is tilted at an angle of 24.935 degrees in relation to the plane of its orbit around the Sun (Earths axis is tilted 23.5 degrees). It makes a complete rotation around its axis in 24 hours, 39 minutes, 36 seconds (Earths rotational period is 23 hours, 56 minutes, 5 seconds). Like Earth, Mars is subject to the cyclic axial wobble that astronomers call precession. Like Earth it is not a perfect sphere but somewhat flattened at the poles and expanded into a bulge at the equator. Like Earth it has four seasons. Like Earth it has icy polar caps, mountains, deserts, and dust storms. And although Mars today is a freezing hell, there is evidence that in some ancient period it was alive with oceans and rivers and enjoyed a climate and atmosphere quite similar to those of Earth.

  How probable is it that the spark that ignited life on Earth would not also have made its mark on neighboring, similar Mars? Whether Earth was deliberately terraformed, in other words, or whether it was seeded with the spores of life from crashed comets—or whether, indeed, life arose here spontaneously and accidentally—it is reasonable to hope that we might find traces of the same kind of process on Mars.

  If such traces are not forthcoming, then the chances that we are alone in the universe increase and the chances of life being discovered anywhere else are dramatically reduced. The implication will be that Earths life-forms emerged under conditions so focused, specialized, and unique—and at the same time so random—that they could not be replicated even on a nearby world belonging to the same solar family. How much less likely, therefore, that they could be replicated on alien worlds in orbit around distant stars.

  For this reason the question of life on Mars must be regarded as one of the great philosophical mysteries of our time. With the rapid advances in exploration of the planet it is a mystery that is soon likely to be solved.

  HINTS OF LIFE

  The evidence in from Mars so far takes four principal forms:

  Earth-based observations from telescopes

  Observations and photographs from orbiting spacecraft

  Chemical and radiological tests carried out on Martian soil samples by NASA landers, with the results being transmitted back to Earth for analysis

  Microscopic examination of meteorites known to have come from Mars

  In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Earth-based telescopes produced the first ever “life on Mars” sensation—the claim that the planet was checkered with a gigantic network of irrigation canals bringing water from the poles to the parched equatorial regions. This claim, which we shall discuss further in part 2 of this book, was put forward by Percival Lowell, a prominent U.S. astronomer, and made an indelible mark on the collective psyche of Americans. Most scientists ridiculed Lowell’s ideas, however, and in the 1970s, NASA’s Mariner 9 and Viking 1 and 2 probes orbited the planet and sent back definitive photographs proving that there were no canals.

  It is now recognized that Lowell (and others who claimed to have seen the canals) were the victims of poor-quality telescopic images and an optical illusion that causes the brain to link disparate, unconnected features into straight lines. Even today, no Earth-based telescope has sufficient resolution to allow us to solve the mystery of life on Mars. We must therefore make our deductions using the three other types of evidence available to us—Martian meteorites, orbiter observations, lander observations.

  We have already seen that two of the Martian meteorites appear to contain traces of primitive microorganisms (although many scientists disagree with this interpretation). Less well known is the fact that a number of the tests carried out in 1976 by the Viking landers also proved positive for life. The impression conveyed in public statements made at the time by NASA is that the planet is barren—because no organic molecules were found on the surface at either of the two landing sites. But puzzlingly, the Martian samples did give positive results for metabolic processes such as photosynthesis and chemosynthesis that are normally associated with life.11 What is known as a gas-exchange experiment also produced a positive result with soil samples liberating substantial quantities of oxygen in response to treatment with an organic nutrient.12 Another positive result produced in a “labeled-release” experiment was absent in a control sample that had been baked at a high temperature—precisely as one would expect if the original reaction had been caused by a biological agent.13

  This leaves the orbiter observations. In frames sent back by Mariner 9 and Viking 1, strangely familiar objects can be seen that have been interpreted by some scientists not only as signs of life but as evidence that advanced intelligent life must once have been present on Mars.

  THE PYRAMIDS OF ELYSIUM

  The earliest anomalous images were acquired during 1972 and show an area of Mars known as the Elysium Quadrangle. At first little attention was paid to these images. Then in 1974 a brief notice appeared in the scientific journal Icarus. Written by Mack Gipson, Jr., and Victor K. Ablordeppy, the article reported:

  Triangular and pyramid-like structures have been observed on the Martian surface. Located in the east central portion of the Elysium Quadrangle, these features are visible on the Mariner photographs, B frames MTVS 4205-3 DAS 07794853 and MTVS 4296-24 DAS 12985882. The structures cast triangular and polygonal shadows. Steep-sided volcanic cones and impact craters occur only a few kilometers away. The mean diameter of the triangular pyramidial structures at the base is approximately three kilometers and the mean diameter of the polygonal structures is approximately six kilometers.14

  Another Mariner photograph, frame 4205-78, quite distinctly shows four massive three-sided pyramids. These were commented on in 1977 by the Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan. “The largest,” he wrote, “are three kilometers across at the base and one kilometer high—much larger than the pyramids of Sumer, Egypt, or Mexico on Earth. They seem to be eroded and ancient and are, perhaps, only small mountains, sandblasted for ages. But they warrant, I think, a careful look.”15

  What is particularly notable about the four structures captured in this latter frame is that they appear to have been set out on the Martian surface in a definite pattern or alignment very like pyramids on terrestrial sites. In this they also have much in common with other Martian “pyramids” that lie in a region known as Cydonia, at approximately 40 degrees north latitude, almost halfway around the planet from Elysium.

  THE PYRAMIDS AND THE “FACE” OF CYDONIA

  The Cydonia pyramids were photographed in 1976 by the Viking 1 orbiter from an altitude of about 1,000 miles and were first identified on Viking frame 35A72 by Dr. Tobias Owen (now professor of astronomy at the University of Hawaii). The same frame, covering approximately 34 by 31 miles—about the size of Greater London—also shows many other features that could be artificial.

  A casual glance reveals only a jumble of hills, craters, and escarpments. Gradually, however, as though a veil is being lifted, the blurred scene begins to feel organized and structured—too intelligent to be the result of random natural processes. Although the scale is grander, i
t does look the way some archaeological sites on Earth might look if photographed from 1,000 miles up. The more closely you examine the frame, the more it becomes apparent that it really could be an ensemble of enormous ruined monuments on the surface of Mars.

  Of these by far the most dramatic is a gigantic Sphinx-like face that NASA officially dismisses as a trick of light and shadow.16 This explanation began to be challenged seriously only after 1980, as we shall see in part 2, when Vincent DiPietro, himself a computer scientist with NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center, discovered another image of the “Face” on frame 70A13. This second image, which had been acquired 35 Martian days later than the first one and under different lighting conditions, made possible comparative views and detailed measurements of the Face. Complete with its distinctive headdress, it is now known to be almost 1.6 miles in length from crown to chin, 1.2 miles wide, and just under 2,600 feet high.17

  The Face could be a small mountain, naturally weathered. But how many mountains have left and right sides so intricately similar? Image analysts say that the “bilateral symmetry” of the Face, mimicking a natural, almost human appearance, is most unlikely to have come about by chance. And this impression is confirmed by other characteristics that have subsequently been identified under computer enhancement. These include “teeth” in the mouth, bilaterally crossed lines above the eyes, and regular lateral stripes on the headpiece—suggestive, to some researchers at least, of the nemes headdress of ancient Egyptian pharaohs.18

  According to Dr. Mark Carlotto, an expert in image processing, “These features appear in both of the Viking images, are coherent shapes, and are structurally integral to the object; therefore they could not have been caused by random noise or by artifacts of the image restoration and enhancement process.”19