Welcome, noble viewers, to Science and Spirituality on Supreme Master Television. Although the surface of Mars appears to have been barren and lifeless for eternity, scientists are closely studying the geological and geochemical data from the red planet for evidence of it having had a biosphere similar to Earth in the past.

Dr. John Brandenburg, a theoretical plasma physicist from the United States, believes that a humanoid civilization once lived on Mars. He is one of the authors of “Dead Mars, Dying Earth,” a book concerning Mars’ past and the lessons its history holds for our planet’s future.

Lately we have observed many severe weather-related disasters around the globe and the rapid disappearance of a number of species, which are urgent signals from Mother Earth that the planet is undergoing tremendous environmental stress. A key message of his book is if we do not make immediate changes, the signs unmistakably point to our fragile abode sharing a fate similar to the red planet. Let us now hear from Dr. Brandenburg about the book and his theories regarding life on Mars.

We are in Madison, Wisconsin (USA), with Dr. John E. Brandenburg, a plasma physicist in an aerospace company in the mid-west. Greetings Dr. Brandenburg.

Very good to have you here.

Among the wonderful reviews and comments on your book “Dead Mars, Dying Earth,” Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and host of the NPR radio show “Science Talk,” commented: “An environmental study so big it takes two planets to tell it. These are stories of science to save a planet’s soul. They climb inside your heart and mind. Read ‘Dead Mars, Dying Earth’ and your home will never look the same.”

Well that’s very kind of him to say that.

So what motivated you and Monica Rix Paxson to write the book “Dead Mars Dying Earth?”

Well, we were very concerned about the course the planet was on and we were hoping to change it in a good direction.

We’ve helped make global warming more of a concern. We must be careful what we dump into the atmosphere.

What evidence led you to the determination that there was water, an ocean, an Earth-like environment and life on Mars in the past, well before NASA’s finding that water could have existed on Mars?

The most obvious evidence that there was an ocean on Mars was the fact that the lower elevations shown here in blue on Mars are much smoother. You’ll see heavy craters and then a very smooth area at a certain elevation and it became obvious to us that that’s where an ocean had been.

There were also isotopic ratios that they had measured in the atmosphere that suggested that Mars had lost a great deal of oxygen and hydrogen in the form of water in the past, and other estimates based on just the rocks of Mars that Mars rocks must have contained enough water to fill an ocean like on Earth.

So what would you say is the significance of that?

Where you find water, liquid water, you will find life.

These long lost civilizations on Mars are hypothesized to be located at several sites, including areas of the planet called “Cydonia” and “Utopia.” This is known as the Cydonian Hypothesis.

Can you comment on how this Cydonia Hypothesis has evolved?

Well, the Cydonian Hypothesis was formulated by us based on the photographs from the Viking (spacecraft) of what looks like the remains of a dead civilization, archaeological remnants. They are found right at the shore of an inlet of the ocean, what would have been the coastline of the ocean and near the mouth of a river channel. So it looked like a good place to build a city if you were a primitive people, like ourselves, in the past.

Also we found other sites, particularly here in Utopia, where there were similar structures and we published all of this. Most people thought it was an interesting hypothesis. And in the course of that, we formulated the ideas that there had been an ocean on Mars so we started publishing just about the ocean. Now, the ocean is a very much accepted hypothesis on Mars.

These parts in the southern part of Mars, the highlands, have many craters. Up in the north, however, it is very smooth, very few craters. That means that those terrains are very young compared to the rest of Mars. So the ocean is on the youngest part of Mars, not the old part. This means the ocean, if it existed, existed for most of Mars’ history and only disappeared in recent geologic time. And where you have liquid water you have basically conditions like on Earth.

The oceans on Earth define our environment as a place where it is good for people to live. The fact that the ocean is on the youngest part of Mars means the ocean persisted for most of Mars’ history. This means that you not only had a chance for life to be on Mars in that ocean but for that life to evolve. You may have had fish on Mars, and even porpoises. So this is a profound thought. It’s not just that Mars had life; it had it for a long time.

We’ll be back with more from our fascinating interview with Dr. Brandenburg after these brief messages. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back, caring viewers to Science and Spirituality on Supreme Master Television. We are speaking with Dr. John Brandenburg, a brilliant US physicist who is sharing with us his research regarding Martian history and its significance to humanity.

How long, based on your research, has Mars had an Earth-like environment?

Probably up until about half a billion years ago.

Now that sounds like a long time in earthly terms, or at least in human terms. However, that is most of the geologic age of the Earth. The Earth is four and a half billion years old. Mars is a similar age and the solar system formed four and a half billion years ago. So this means almost all of Mars’ history, it had an ocean and conditions suitable for life on Earth.

Dr. Brandenburg theorizes that the habitable atmosphere on Mars disappeared following an asteroid impacting the planet.

Mars basically flash froze in a day or so, and almost all the living things on Mars perished.

So do you think that life currently exists on Mars?

Yes.

We would find rather primitive organisms than can survive under very harsh conditions. The primitive bacteria would have survived this catastrophe, and managed to hang onto little ecological niches on Mars. A hot spring here, buried organic debris, like coal, deposits of old organic matter that they could still eat. In fact, evidence for this is large amounts of methane are coming out of parts of Mars’ surface and this is probably from old ocean sediments being digested by bacteria. This happens on Earth in swamps.

So, you wrote about your perspective of indigenous and intelligent life on Mars. Will you elaborate on that and explain how and why research findings about Mars make a profound statement about the present and future welfare of the Earth?

The human race should be careful about what it does to this planet, that we should tend and nurture this planet rather than just riding roughshod over it. We should be careful how we alter the balance of life on this planet by dumping all this carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and other things that we are doing.

Also, it made us aware that we are part of the cosmos. We can’t turn our backs on it and hope it will leave us alone. The cosmos will reach out and touch you. It used to be the world was the Earth to the human race. The world is no longer the Earth, the world is the cosmos that we live in. We must understand the cosmos. We must go out and explore it, find out who our neighbors are, get to know them, etc.

By the way, the Cydonian Hypothesis was basically a hypothesis that life and intelligence were to be found everywhere throughout the universe. If you go to the first planet in the universe that’s Earth-like and you can explore it and you find liquid water which means almost definitely there had been life there, that not only finding conditions for life but conditions for long-term life where you could have evolution and in fact intelligence, then you must imagine that the cosmos is full of planets like Earth with people on them.

In 1976, the US spacecraft Viking Orbiter I recorded images of Mars. One image taken has astounded many astronomers, cosmologists and other scientists – a likeness of the human face on the planet’s surface. What’s even more amazing is that later additional “faces” were found in other regions of Mars.

The “Face” on Mars, since it looked humanoid, some people immediately said, “Well that can’t be a sign of intelligence. It must be a trick of lighting because anyone on another planet wouldn’t look like us. They would look like something else.” I find that reasoning kind of nonsensical because we look like the way we do for perfectly reasonable reasons.

So I just thought that we should investigate and we then published the results of our investigation and the public’s imagination was captured. So, well we published this hypothesis and in my opinion, the evidence that has been coming in, including new pictures, have tended to support the hypothesis.

Can you comment on more recent research findings on Mars based on NASA’s and European Space Agency’s new data?

They’re finding that Mars not only had an ocean but apparently had oxygen; it was highly oxidizing. They’ll say “it was highly oxidizing there,” meaning there was lots of oxygen. That’s why Mars is red. To even have liquid water there, they had to have had a rather dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide to trap a lot of heat, carbon dioxide and methane in addition to oxygen.

So, we’re finding lots of evidence to support The New Mars Synthesis, which is just the basic statement about Mars’ climate being Earth-like for a long period. Since that’s 90% of the Cydonian hypothesis, the Cydonian hypothesis is being also reinforced.

Our respectful appreciation goes to Dr. John Brandenburg for giving us insight into his research on the history of Mars. Please join us again next Monday on Science and Spirituality for Part 2 of our interview with this highly knowledgeable physicist.

“Dead Mars, Dying Earth” is available at

Interested viewers, thank you for your company on today’s program. Words of Wisdom is next, following Noteworthy News. May we learn wisely from the fate of our neighboring planets and become better stewards of our precious Earth.

For more details on Dr. Brandenburg, please visit