There have long been misconceptions about the Red Planet, Mars, our celestial neighbor, and with renewed interest in Mars, lets take a look at some of the weirdest misconceptions and weird facts that people conceived and believed at one point in time.

Spock was planned to be 1/2 Martian.

Although this isn’t a misconception, this weird fact felt like it is worth adding in. And yes, you read the fact properly. Gene Roddenberry had envisioned Spock to be 1/2 Martian. The gist of the story is that the idea was scrapped because there were upcoming missions to Mars that could disprove that there was intelligent life on the planet. Therefore, Spock being 1/2 Martian was changed.

Martians Built Complex Canals

In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was quite common for people to believe that canals existed on Mars. Due to the low resolution telescopes available and no photography, the surface features were mistaken for canals. Once more detailed observations were performed, the idea of canals were disproven.

Nikola Tesla thought he had picked up signals from Mars.

In 1901, Nikola Tesla thought that he had received radio signals from the red planet. However, his discovery didnt receive much scientific interest, nor merit as we now know that there aren’t any radio signals coming from Mars, unless they are signals that humans or human made machines make.

People Have Already Landed On The Planet

After landing on the moon, the thought is that they continued onto Mars. The furtherest humanity has traveled in space from Earth is the Moon. But then again, if that had already happened, what would make Elon Musks claims to send people newsworthy? Maybe that it wasn’t NASA To be the ones sending people? But the bigger question would be: If humanity had already been to other planets before, why would it take so long to return or even discuss the possibility of doing it again?

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