William Olaf Stapledon And Mars Structure Stapledon - Caldy, UK
Posted by: 
dtrebilc
N 53° 21.158 W 003° 09.815
30U E 489111 N 5911512
This plaque in the Wirral country Park honours William Olaf Stapledon who lived most of his life in the area and was a science fiction writer.
Waymark Code: WM10QXV
Location: North West England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 06/13/2019
Views: 1
The plaque is attached to a single arch brick bridge over the Wirral Way. The Wirral Way is a long distance footpath along the route of a former railway line that has now been converted to a rails to trails route. It is the former Birkenhead Railway route from Hooton to West Kirby.
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The whole of the route also forms the Wirral Country Park and this bridge is close to where Stapledon used to live.
William Olaf Stapledon
His science fiction works written in the 1930s were on the subject of man's exploration of the universe in the far future and his book Last and First Men introduced the idea of terraforming planets.
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The Mars Feature Stapledon
When NASA launched the mission to Mars that landed the 'Spirit' rover their mission included the object of investigating the structure of the rocks and features on Mars.
The rover lasted much longer than expected and it was able to explore a much bigger area than expected.
In 2009, in its sixth year, NASA was interested in looking at a feature that appeared to be made of Silica. They named the feature Stapledon and sent the rover to investigate and were able to confirm that it was in fact more than 70% Silica.
This is evidence of the hypothesis that Gusev Crater is a region that eons ago featured hot springs or volcanic fumarole activity, the kind of place where life might have formed.
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