Is There a "Mars Effect?"

October 13, 2016 at 5:15 am by Frank White

With all the recent excitement about a human mission to Mars that has the goal of establishing a settlement there, I have begun to ask myself if there is a "Mars Effect," analogous to the Overview Effect, which is beginning to have an impact on how we think about our place in the universe.

I discussed the idea of the Copernican Perspective in my book, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution, as the realization that we are not only a part of the Earth system but that the Earth is part of the solar system, which is becoming our new environment. As we see more and more images of Mars in the media, it is a reasonable question as to whether the "Mars Effect" is a subset of the Copernican Perspective. I think it is premature to define this phenomenon, but I do believe it is worth exploring.