Wired just posted this fascinating article about Mars and its atmosphere:

“Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids,” Elton John once said. “In fact, it’s cold as hell. And there’s no one there to raise them if you did.” Wrong, American astronomer Percival Lowell would have said if he hadn’t … I guess … died 100 years ago. Also, what do you mean there’s no one there to raise them? What about you, dummy?

Our man Lowell, you see, was quite convinced that an alien race occupied Mars, though he never directly commented on their potential as babysitters for human astronauts. And he even had the evidence to prove they existed: an immense network of canals carved into the Martian surface that he spied through a telescope.

Read the full story here!