PL, Observer of Mars

Sure enough, Sunday was wet, cold and dank. But today was clear and warmish again -- in the morning. Then, around noon, things trended cold and dankish again. The wind blew so hard that one of the large plastic toy cars we keep parked on the deck came perilously close to crashing into one of our back doors, the sliding one made of glass, which would have made quite a noise at first, followed by the tinkling of broken glass. I don’t need that kind of diversion in my day, so I secured the toy car against the wind.

That’s March for you, a Manichean struggle between the forces of spring and winter. Or would that be more of a Zoroastrian struggle? Maybe just mud wrestling between the seasons.

Today Google featured one of its headline illustrations as part of its name, a telescope on Earth looking at Mars, which sported a pair of little green men. It was a link to “Google Mars” that went nowhere the time or two I tried it. But I know a little about astronomy, and guessed that the illustration had something to do with Percival Lowell. Sure enough, today is his birthday.

(Coincidentally, today was also the day Uranus was discovered. King George III might have deserved the honor as a patron of the sciences, but I’m glad “Georgium Sidus” didn’t stick as Uranus’ name, because by that pattern Neptune, discovered at the Berlin Observatory, would have been named after Fredrick Wilhelm IV of Prussia, and Pluto after Herbert Hoover.)

Which brings us back to Percival Lowell, since Pluto was discovered at the observatory at Mars Hill, Arizona, which he built, though he didn’t live long enough to see the ninth planet himself. Lowell has a curious place in the history of science, I think. For someone whose observations -- canals on Mars -- were so completely a product of wishful thinking, he’s still widely remembered. So much so that standard histories of astronomy devote space to his erroneous ideas, Google honors the man, and I can make a semi-educated guess that today was his birthday.

On the other hand, being right isn’t everything, and maybe we should remember some who were boldly wrong. Canals on Mars = a hell of a fine idea, after all. Lowell ought to be acknowledged at least (and maybe he is) as one of the godfathers of science fiction.