David Kipping

and the claim of Martian canals that used to be there.

Right.

There's this phenomena, it's called, there's these laws of gestalt reconfiguration.

It's sort of like closure.

Like if you see dots that almost make a circle, your brain will kind of make it a circle in its mind.

Continuation, that if you see like dot dash lines, your brain will see a continuous line almost.

It will fill in the gaps almost.

And so the same thing is thought to have happened to this famous astronomer, Percival Lowell, in the late 19th century.

So about he was like this like super rich dude from in a Boston area.

He was from a wealthy family of industrialists and he got really into astronomy.

And so he was convinced life was out there.

A, he was wealthy, so had means.

B, he thought life was out there.

There was a quote from his memoir and it was something like, that what we call life is an inevitable detail of cosmic evolution as gravitation itself.

So he just thought like, it's just, this always happens.

Life always happens.

And on top of that, he'd been told by the Boston ophthalmologist that he had the best eyesight the ophthalmologist had ever seen.

So he had these three things in his head.

He had, I've got the means so I can do it.

I've got the best eyesight anyone's ever had.