The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun
a mean distance
140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives
the sun is barely half of that received
this world. It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life
its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh
the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling
the temperature
which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary
the support of animated existence.
An excerpt from "The War of the Worlds" by H. G. Wells
