A respected physicist and author, John Brandenberg, has claimed that intelligent life once flourished on Mars - but was annihilated by a nuclear attack so intense it left the planet cold and lifeless.
The author has urged that a human mission to the planet be mounted immediately - in case we are in danger from the attackers who 'killed' Mars.
Brandenberg said that many of the nuclear isotopes in Mars's atmosphere 'resemble those from hydrogen bombs on Earth' and hypotheses in a new book, 'Death on Mars', that a humanoid race once lived there but was wiped out.
'This Martian civilization apparently perished due to a planet-wide catastrophe of unknown origin,' he writes, citing craters visible on the surface near the Curiosity Rover. 'Was it a massive nuclear attack?'
Many physicists believe that an event such as an asteroid strike may have robbed Mars of its magnetic field, and thus its atmosphere, in the distant past - but Brandenberg believes that the planet may have been killed by another civilisation or even a rogue artificial intelligence.
He also warns that we could be next.
Brandenberg claims that craters in the planet's surface could be evidence of a long-past nuclear war.
'The discovery of dead civilization on Mars, whose end was apparently catastrophic and due to unknown causes, reinforces our understanding that the cosmos can be a dangerous place and requires a vigorous response from the human race, to reduce the probability that we will perish the same way.
'The most likely cause of the Cydonian demise, the large asteroid impact from the Lyot impact basin, causing collapse of a Mars greenhouse system, is a hazard of the cosmos that we were aware of.
'However, the second possible catastrophe, a pair of large and anomalous nuclear events, centered apparently near Cydonia and also near Galaxias, and leaving no craters, is much more difficult to understand. For this reason we must maximize our knowledge of what transpired on Mars, and this requires an international human mission.'
Nigel Watson, author of the Haynes UFO Investigations Manual, says, 'John Brandenberg is not the first person to suggest that Mars was 'murdered' by nuclear explosions. Writers who have promoted the idea that ancient astronauts visited and lived on the Earth thousands of years ago, claim that sacred texts like the Bible recount stories of nuclear explosions.
