page_title: Extraterrestrial life
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Extraterrestrial life / Cultural impact / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: Ελληνικά: Κανάλια στον πλανήτη Άρη, όπως τα περιέγραφε ο αμερικανός αστρονόμος Πέρσιβαλ Λόουελ. English: Martian canals depicted by Percival Lowell. Русский: Марсианские каналы зарисованные Персивалем Лоуэллом.
context_page_description: Extraterrestrial life is hypothetical life which may occur outside of Earth and which did not originate on Earth. Such life might range from simple prokaryotes to beings with civilizations far more advanced than humanity. The Drake equation speculates about the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. The science of extraterrestrial life in all its forms is known as astrobiology.
  Since the mid-20th century, active ongoing research has taken place to look for signs of extraterrestrial life. This encompasses a search for current and historic extraterrestrial life, and a narrower search for extraterrestrial intelligent life. Depending on the category of search, methods range from the analysis of telescope and specimen data to radios used to detect and send communication signals.
  The concept of extraterrestrial life, and particularly extraterrestrial intelligence, has had a major cultural impact, chiefly in works of science fiction. Over the years, science fiction has introduced a number of theoretical ideas, each having a wide range of possibilities. Many have piqued public interest in the possibilities of extraterrestrial life.
context_section_description: Speculation about life on Mars increased in the late 19th century, following telescopic observation of apparent Martian canals—which soon, however, turned out to be optical illusions. Despite this, in 1895, American astronomer Percival Lowell published his book Mars, followed by Mars and its Canals in 1906, proposing that the canals were the work of a long-gone civilization. The idea of life on Mars led British writer H. G. Wells to write the novel The War of the Worlds in 1897, telling of an invasion by aliens from Mars who were fleeing the planet's desiccation.
  Spectroscopic analysis of Mars's atmosphere began in earnest in 1894, when U.S. astronomer William Wallace Campbell showed that neither water nor oxygen was present in the Martian atmosphere.
  By 1909 better telescopes and the best perihelic opposition of Mars since 1877 conclusively put an end to the canal hypothesis.
  The science fiction genre, although not so named during the time, developed during the late 19th century. Jules Verne's Around the Moon (1870) features a discussion of the possibility of life on the Moon, but with the conclusion that it is barren.
  Stories involving extraterrestrials are found in e.g. Garrett P. Serviss's Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898), an unauthorized sequel to
  The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells was published in 1897 which stands at the beginning of the popular idea of the "Martian invasion" of Earth prominent in 20th-century pop culture.
caption: Artificial Martian channels, depicted by Percival Lowell
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