“Astronomers discover an extraterrestrial civilization”. For many, this headline would be the most exciting, challenging and profound discovery in the history of mankind. The idea of a plurality of inhabited worlds in the universe is as old as civilization. It was a heretical idea in pre-Renaissance times— Giordano Bruno was burned in Rome’s Piazza dei Fiore for it in 1600. A slow but steady increase in the number of articles and books on the possible existence of beings other than us have appeared since then. The rapid progress of science and technology, our understanding, albeit poor, of the mechanisms that govern cosmic evolution, the consolidation of the Darwinian hypothesis and most importantly, the tenacious work of the pioneers in the heterodox program encompassed under the acronym SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) have made it possible for the scientific community to take seriously the possibility of life on other planets .
Interestingly, in the 1830s quite a few scientists believed that there was life on the Moon. Some even claimed to have seen roads and other artificial constructions on its surface.
But the best happened when on August 25, 1835, when the New York newspaper The Sun began to publish a series of articles supposedly based on others published in the Edinburgh Courant and the Edinburgh Journal of Science .
According to these sources, The Sun continued, the astronomer who discovered Uranus, Sir John Herschel, had built a telescope with a seven-ton lens. Thanks to an ingenious arrangement of lenses and mirrors, Herschel was able to magnify an image 42,000 times without losing brightness.
In six witty articles, The Sun reeled off Herschel’s discoveries : volcanoes, white-sand beaches, trees, deep red flowers, and amethyst obelisks. The animals and birds were reminiscent of real and mythical animals, but with appreciable differences and were generally grandiose in appearance. Among the most mysterious animals were ones the size of a goat, with a single unicorn-style horn, and spherical amphibians capable of moving at high speeds. And the great protagonist of this story: Vespertilio homo or bat man .
The Batman
No, The Sun was not referring to the Batman comic book character but to some meter twenty creatures capable of flying like bats and walking like humans. The Sun described them as communicative, expressive and intelligent, capable of developing art and literature. The largest versions of these beings were concentrated around a beautiful temple of blue stone and golden roofs. They were, in short, celestial creatures, who ate, drank, bathed and flew while the rest of the animals moved among them without fear.
The public was fascinated. Such was the success that the author of the joke himself, the writer Richard Adams Locke, was surprised that there were people who confirmed with their observations of the Moon what had emerged solely from their imagination.
Of course, everything did not end here. The seed was sown.
UFOs take over
The quintessential modern myth, the UFOs, picked up the torch of the biggest and most resounding booby-trap. In 1953 H. Percy Wilkins, a retired lunar cartographer, released to the public the result of his study of lunar photographs taken by large telescopes. In his analysis he had discovered bridges on the Moon built to span the gorges and canyons there. Ufologists lacked time to cling to such a strange idea. Donald Keyhoe, USAF colonel and ufologist published in 1955 the book The Flying Saucer Conspiracy where he announced that spectroscopic analysis had identified the metal with which they had been built. When astronomer Donald H. Menzel – well known for his criticism of UFOs – said that he did not see any bridges, Keyhoe lashed out, accusing him of collaborating with the military and a member of a government conspiracy to hide the truth about UFOs from the world.
Reference:
Crowe, M. (2008) Extraterrestrial Life Debate, Antiquity to 1915: A Source Book, University of Notre Dame Press
