Из журнала Scientific American 1870: Инопланетная жизнь? Кому это нужно?

I think it’s a fair point. They don’t need to expend energy on speculation about alien life when there is plenty to spend on Earthly matters. And especially in 1870 they were in the midst of the Industrial Revolution so there was a lot to write and think about.

It’s not the responsibility of every publication to feed the public’s desire for alien life speculation.

Today of course we clearly have something going on in our skies. Which even our government has been forced to admit. So it’s no longer speculation and is worthy of some amount of energy from our media to try and dig deeper.

I have to guess that this was a reaction to the «discovery» of the canals of Mars in 1858.

Original here: https://archive.org/details/sim_scientific-american_1870-07-02_23_1/page/7/mode/1up?view=theater