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The Sirens of Mars
Searching for Life on Another World
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WINNER OF THE PHI BETA KAPPA AWARD FOR SCIENCE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Times (UK) • Library Journal
“Lovely . . . Johnson’s prose swirls with lyrical wonder, as varied and multihued as the apricot deserts, butterscotch skies and blue sunsets of Mars.”—Anthony Doerr, The New York Times Book Review
Mars was once similar to Earth, but today there are no rivers, no lakes, no oceans. Coated in red dust, the terrain is bewilderingly empty. And yet multiple spacecraft are circling Mars, sweeping over Terra Sabaea, Syrtis Major, the dunes of Elysium, and Mare Sirenum—on the brink, perhaps, of a staggering find, one that would inspire humankind as much as any discovery in the history of modern science.
In this beautifully observed, deeply personal book, Georgetown scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson tells the story of how she and other researchers have scoured Mars for signs of life, transforming the planet from a distant point of light into a world of its own.
Johnson’s fascination with Mars began as a child in Kentucky, turning over rocks with her father and looking at planets in the night sky. She now conducts fieldwork in some of Earth’s most hostile environments, such as the Dry Valleys of Antarctica and the salt flats of Western Australia, developing methods for detecting life on other worlds. Here, with poetic precision, she interlaces her own personal journey—as a female scientist and a mother—with tales of other seekers, from Percival Lowell, who was convinced that a utopian society existed on Mars, to Audouin Dollfus, who tried to carry out astronomical observations from a stratospheric balloon. In the process, she shows how the story of Mars is also a story about Earth: This other world has been our mirror, our foil, a telltale reflection of our own anxieties and yearnings.
Empathetic and evocative, The Sirens of Mars offers an unlikely natural history of a place where no human has ever set foot, while providing a vivid portrait of our quest to defy our isolation in the cosmos.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 7, 2020 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593210291
- File size: 228667 KB
- Duration: 07:56:23
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from March 16, 2020
Planetary scientist Johnson delivers an enthusiastic and lyrical chronicle of the scientific quest to uncover Mars’s secrets. From Mars’s prominent place in the night sky, to the water-filled “canali” 19th-century Milanese astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli and 20th-century Mars enthusiast Percival Lowell imagined they perceived on its surface, the red planet has long provoked imagination and speculation. “Before it rusted over, Mars was much more like Earth,” Johnson writes by way of explaining why modern scientists, including herself, have searched for life on an apparently barren planet. Evincing a gift for vivid imagery, she shares memories from her own work, including of how computer software transforms images of the Martian surface into detail-packed, “psychedelic swathes of colors.” She also provides a general timeline of the four Mars rover missions, detailing the goals and findings of each one, always focusing on the discoveries’ implications for the search for alien life, as when a rover discovered traces of the elements required for life: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. Johnson’s skillful narrative will engage serious students of planetary science as well as armchair adventurers curious about “a wilderness stretching off into the horizon, vast and full of possibility.”
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