MARTIAN NEWS - WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?
All the News around the Solar System from a Martian Viewpoint

ELWOOD HERRING TALKS ABOUT MARTIAN NEWS

My thinking behind this website was to present all the latest Space news as factually as possible, but to do it from the perspective of an outsider to Earth - and considering all the interest we have in Mars at present, what better viewpoint could there be than from a slightly worried Martian civilisation?

I have long been interested in astronomy and space travel, and have often tried to envisage how our space-faring exploits would appear to an alien who knew nothing about us - and this is my chance to put my ideas into text form in an entertaining and informative way. The stories may appear to have their humorous side, but the site itself is not intended as a joke - the facts are presented exactly as they would appear to a Martian observer, who can see very little of the goings-on at surface level on our world, but nevertheless has a good vantage point to observe our climb into space and inexorable invasion of his own world.

I hope this website has some educational value also, as it attempts to present the Human Race as an outsider might see us - and that may not necessarily be in a favourable light. For example, I made the assumption that the first Earthly event that would make a Martian sit up and start worrying would be the Hiroshima bomb in 1945 - so I started to build the site from that point in history. Then with the aid of astronomical software I discovered that Mars would have been well below the horizon in Japan on that fateful morning, and so no Martian could possibly have seen it - so I had to figure out a way around that problem. (As I said, I want the news items to be as factual as possible, so if you spot any obvious errors please email me!)

I also see no reason why I shouldn't put in completely fictitious news stories providing of course that they do not compromise our existing knowledge of the Solar System. After all, a real Martian news service would not merely confine itself to news about Earth, there may be all sorts of other events going on around us that were are completely unaware of. So I have invented some stories which I call "Mars Exclusives" to add a bit of healthy controversy into the mix, and provide a bit of light entertainment.

So - please enjoy these news stories and take them in the spirit in which they were intended, and don't be afraid to let me know what you think!

Paul Williams a.k.a. Elwood Herring 2004