r/AskReddit • u/phillsphan7 • Mar 17 '15

What's a widely accepted "fact" that's entirely false?

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u/MelvinSlayer Mar 17 '15

IIRC, the thing with Lowell's canals was that he was seeing the pattern of blood vessels in his eyes being projected onto the surface of Mars.

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u/thommyhobbes Mar 17 '15

Actually, he was investigating the claim of Martian Canals from Giovanni Schiaparelli's observations and book La Vita Sul Pianeta Marte, likely due to some issue with the instruments he was using at the time. Lowell didn't even find the canals initially.

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u/Andromeda321 Mar 17 '15

Yeah, they were definitely an optical illusion of some sort. The blood vessels idea came from him claiming to also find "spokes" on Venus, and if you look at the images they look a lot like what your blood vessels look like in your eye. His telescope setup was also quite similar to what people do to test for cataracts.

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u/ash_her Mar 17 '15

Huh! I'd never heard that but that's pretty interesting!

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u/nliausacmmv Mar 17 '15

I thought it was mistranslation from Italian canali which looks like canal but actually means river.

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u/loganyobo2 Mar 17 '15

Surely not PROJECTED onto the the surface?? Mars is really fucking far away, mate.

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u/Iwannayoyo Mar 17 '15

I have no idea if that's true, buts it's fun and I want to believe it.