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- Although Brian DePalma's "Mission to Mars"
opened last weekend with a box office-leading $23 million gate, most critics
are dissing the sci-fi epic as a cliche-ridden yawner. Attempting to accent
the positive, Stephen Corrick says, "I think you can safely say that
Tim Robbins plays a better frozen dead guy than Leonardo DiCaprio."
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- Corrick isn't connected with the movie, but as a member
of the Society for Planetary SETI Research, he isn't complaining about
the timing of its release. Last weekend also marked the debut of the Chicago
literary agent's most recent project, Dead Mars, Dying Earth (The Crossing
Press, $26.95), written by plasma physicist John Brandenburg and co-author
Monica Rix Paxson.
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- "When you look at some of the research done by SPSR
over the years, it's fair to look at where the movie really came from,"
says Corrick, whose group has been studying Mars for signs of extraterrestrial
intelligence during the past six years. "John suggested (in the 1980s)
that material from a cometary impact on Mars triggered the Precambrian
explosion of life on Earth."
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- In "Mission to Mars," the astronauts establish
a base camp on the Red Planet in a desert called Cydonia. Confronted with
the so-called Face on Mars, they ultimately discover how an ancient catastrophe
there helped jump-start life on Earth.
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- Dead Mars, Dying Earth theorizes the comet responsible
for gouging Mars' 120-mile wide Lyot impact crater 500 million years ago
also blasted organic seed debris onto Earth, which in turn hastened the
evolution of primitive aquatic life.
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- This Friday night at 7, Corrick, Brandenburg and a former
member of President Reagan's National Commission on Space will be at Barnes
& Noble Booksellers in West Melbourne not only to discuss origins,
but potential endings as well.
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- Dead Mars details troubling parallels between Mars and
Earth and contends Earth slowly is choking on OID, or oxygen inventory
depletion. OID is created by civilization's exhaustion of its plant life.
The premise is based on Brandenburg's 1998 paper delivered to the American
Geophysical Union, in which U.S. Weather Bureau measurements of atmospheric
carbon dioxide reached the highest levels in recorded history, dating back
to the 1700s. The 1998 numbers represented the biggest single-year leap
ever.
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- Dead Mars goes on to hypothesize that, with burning fossil
fuels and deforestation raging out of control, the north Atlantic Ocean
has absorbed 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. At some point,
the sea may reach a saturation level and release lethal bursts of the odorless
gas. Brandenburg cites the 1986 Lake Nyos tragedy in Cameroon, when silent
carbon dioxide belched forth one night and killed 1,700 people.
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- "The Atlantic Ocean is like a big rug," says
Brandenburg, who works with an aerospace firm outside Washington, D.C.
"We sweep everything under it."
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- Dead Mars retraces the research that led Brandenburg
to study potential Earthly analogues on Mars. Brandenburg has argued that
Martian meteorites recovered on Earth revealed rich organic components
suggestive of oil. This was long before NASA announced in 1996 the discovery
of what it contended were Martian microfossils in meteorites.
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- But what initially marked Brandenburg as controversial
was his work with Goddard Space Flight Center engineers Vincent DiPietro
and Greg Molenaar. The three collaborated on a study -- Unusual Martian
Surface Features -- examining peculiar photos from the 1976 Viking mission.
That's when the Mars Face, as well as other nearby formations in Cydonia,
began being debated for artificial origins.
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- Mars Global Surveyor's sharper photo of the Face in 1998
appeared to reveal a more natural landform. Certainly, the public debates
stopped. But despite NASA's claim it has acquired more pictures at better
angles, none have been forthcoming, says SPSR member David Webb of Daytona
Beach.
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- A retired Embry-Riddle University aerospace professor
and an ex-Space Commission panelist, Webb contributed to the 1998 book,
The Case for the Face. Webb will join Corrick and Brandenburg on Friday
night.
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- Webb says the artificiality issue remains an "open
question" that should be answered "in an open fashion."
Preconceived attitudes from institutional science, especially about life
on Mars, aren't serving the public interest.
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- "They're like the high priests of old coming out
of the temple and pronouncing, "This is the way it is,' " Webb
says. "It's like, because we've always called it the Red Planet, it'll
always be the Red Planet. Isn't that ridiculous?"
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- Webb traces resistance to recasting a more Earth-like
Mars -- and its implications for life -- to the early 20th century, when
scientists divined Martian canals and waterways through their telescopes.
Those hopes collapsed 30 years ago when Mariner missions instead charted
an arid wasteland. The pro-life crowd, he says, never recovered from the
embarrassment.
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- "It became scientific death to argue for life on
Mars," Webb recalls. "I remember discussing it with (Pulitzer
Prize-winning astronomer) Carl Sagan. Personally, he leaned toward Mars
having supported life in the past, but as a scientist, he would never say
so. I decry that attitude."
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- Brandenburg says the only way to resolve the issue is
manned exploration. But for that to happen, he says, NASA needs to take
the Mars campaign away from JPL, which got scorched this week by independent
reports assessing the failures of last year's Polar Lander and Climate
Observer missions.
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- "I have it on excellent authority that JPL wants
no major discoveries on Mars because they oppose manned landings. They
want to keep it an academic exercise," Brandenburg charges. "Mars
needs to be turned over to Johnson Space Center in Houston."
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- It doesn't get much more controversial than this. But
Brandenburg says "Mission to Mars" should've been a documentary,
not a sci-fi flick. He says NASA's close work with the filmmakers -- despite
the movie's the-Face-is-real script, which challenges conventional opinions
-- is a practical public relations move.
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- "The ongoing investigations into Cydonia represent
legitimate science," he says. "We're going to have to go there
and find out. It'll be very dangerous. And the astronauts who lead the
way are going to be heroes."
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