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

Welcome, respected 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, a theory called the Cydonian Hypothesis. 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. In this second and final part of our interview with Dr. Brandenburg, we continue our intriguing discussion with him about our planetary neighbor.

In 1976, the US spacecraft Viking Orbiter I recorded images of Mars. One image, from a region called Cydonia, 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. Dr. Brandenburg now provide more insight into this phenomena.

In your opinion, what are the most profound and significant findings from the Mars research?

The fact that we know so much about Mars now says a great deal about the human race, that we are a very curious people who are intent on finding truth. I think the most significant thing that we have found basically is the “Face” on Mars because that tells you what Mars’ climate was like for most of its history, right there, in one statement, one eloquent statement. It says that Mars was alive and had a climate like Earth’s for most of its history.

So, has NASA taken images of Cydonia again in its most recent mission?

Yes, they have, and they look just like the old pictures. The object is quite eroded. If you’ve seen any archaeology before it is spruced up, it looks pretty rough because it’s old and it’s been eroded. Nature tends to take whatever we make and reduce it to dust and gravel, and the same thing has happened. But we see evidence of details, anatomical details and structural details that indicate to me that it is artificial.

There are also other “faces” in Utopia. They have taken a new picture of one of them and it looks very much like the “Face” in Cydonia and it is a “face.” I think it will be established probably within the next four or five years that there was and is life on Mars, and we will start talking about bacteria. Then, they will move on to talking maybe about fish fossils that they have found.

By investigating Mars, we are on a collision course with life; life and death in the cosmos.

Where is Cydonia?

Cydonia is right here in this area. It’s right on the shoreline of what would have been the ocean. What’s also interesting is there’s a kind of hotspot of radioactivity in this area. So two great disasters happened on Mars, one here and then this asteroid impact happened here, and Cydonia was right in between them. That’s very puzzling. Why would so many bad things happen in one area of Mars that just happens to have had archaeology in it?

In the Cydonian Hypothesis, the hypothetical Cydonian civilization did not look very advanced. It didn’t look like they had any level of technology beyond Egypt when they built the pyramids. The occurrence of the radioactive hotspot on Mars in the Mare Acidalium, near the Cydonia Face which is basically to the west of it and then the Lyot impact basin to the east of Cydonia means that two tremendous catastrophes on Mars happened in almost the same geologic area and they basically bracketed Cydonia.

So that’s very puzzling. One starts to examine various science fiction scenarios for what could have really occurred there. We’re like Sherlock Holmes, investigating the scene of some occurrence, wondering why the dog didn’t bark.

So we continue to look at the Mars mystery and it’s a wonderful thing to be living in this age where we’re finally getting the answers to all these mysteries we used to wonder about. They used to think there were canals on Mars. Well, there weren’t any canals but there are water channels. There’s everything on Mars that they actually imagined there was but it isn’t quite the same as they imagined it.

The famed US astrophysicist Dr. Carl Sagan supported searching for life in the Universe. One of his most memorable quotes is: “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”

Will you share with us some of the outcomes of your interactions with Dr. Carl Sagan?

He was very encouraging to us simply by being interested. I found him to be an eminent scientist and a very clear scientific thinker. Much of the Cydonian Hypothesis owes itself to his questions. He basically, by his questions and his reasoning back and forth with me, he enabled me to formulate the hypothesis in a much better manner than what I otherwise would have. His support was vital in getting NASA to actually take new pictures (of Cydonia).

When we return, we will hear from Dr Brandenburg about the urgent signals nature is sending us that Earth is on course to become like the present-day Mars. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Science and Spirituality for our program regarding life on Mars and Earth. Dr. John Brandenburg now addresses the connection between the two planets in relation to climate and environment.

So how did you conclude that Earth is dying?

We are losing biodiversity. One of the signs of health of any ecological system is how many different little ecological niches does it have? Does it have a place for tree frogs? Does it have a place for birds nesting in the trees? How many different types of trees, etc.? And Earth is losing that.

We are going from being a rainbow of colors to being just one color, one kind of tree, no tree frogs, one kind of bird, etc. We’re losing the different species that have always been part of the Earth. We’re losing the fact that Earth is a family of life and that family is losing members, and we should be very concerned about that. However, I remain an optimist. I believe the human race can solve these problems.

So what does the relationship between Mars and Earth mean to you as a scientist and what should it mean to Earth’s citizens at large?

We should be careful with the planet we have but we should learn as much as possible from the story of life and death on Mars.

One of the most chilling scenarios in your book is stated on page 153. It says, “The world we know is like the Titanic.”

Yes.

“It is grand, chic, high-powered, and it is effortless through a frigid sea of icebergs. It does not have enough lifeboats, (No) and those that it has will be poorly employed. There’s a reason why interest in the Titanic has been revived. It is the exact metaphor for our planet. On some level, we know we are on the Titanic. We just don’t know we’ve been hit.” Can you elaborate on that?

Well, my co-author, Monica Paxson, who is a brilliant woman, and I, both ended up thinking about that same analogy simultaneously and it seemed like such a good metaphor. On the Titanic, there were a whole mixture of passengers, a lot of whom were very poor. When the Titanic went down, the lifeboats were basically for the rich people.

If the Sahara Desert expands into the Sahel and even into the Congo Basin, it will be the poorest in the world who suffer. They will have to move to find new places to live. They will be the ones who will run out of food because they don’t have enough water to raise their crops. The rich societies have power to adjust to changes in climate. The poor societies do not.

A tragic example is the impact of the great earthquake in Haiti versus in Chile and the economic difference between Chile and Haiti is quite large. And you could see that even though the earthquake was much stronger, the Chileans have reacted as a society in a much more organized and functional manner. Order was immediately restored.

And so just by extrapolation, if the world’s climate changes by raising a few average degrees, the Sahara expands, various rivers start drying up, parts of the world that will be mostly affected by this will be near the equator and where life is hard already. I really think that we must do whatever we can to avoid this happening.

What is your view of the role of spirituality in connection with the current crisis on our planet?

As a Christian, the First Commandment is to love our neighbor, to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. If our neighbors are going to suffer great dislocation because we’re burning a lot of fossil fuel, then obviously our religious duty is to change our behavior so that our neighbors do not suffer great dislocation or hardship. That is just the first duty of anyone who wants to act in love towards their neighbor, which is the great Commandment.

On behalf of Supreme Master Television and our viewers, I want to thank you for sharing your wisdom with us.

Thank you so much for coming up and talking to me. (Alright) Great pleasure.

Once again we express our gratitude to Dr. John Brandenburg for speaking about his in-depth research on Mars and championing the protection of our one and only planetary home. We wish him the very best in his future research endeavors.

For more details on Dr. Brandenburg, please visit “Dead Mars, Dying Earth” is available at

Loyal viewers, we thank you for joining us on Science and Spirituality. Words of Wisdom is next, following Noteworthy News. May Heaven’s light always embrace our planet.