{"pk":62196,"title":"Mars excitement in Australian newspapers, 1877–1899: Humour and the public negotiation of astronomical knowledge","subtitle":null,"abstract":"<p>Speculation about Martian canals was a recurring feature of late nineteenth-century popular astronomy. This paper examines how colonial newspapers used humour to negotiate the epistemic uncertainty and interpretive excess associated with canal theory. Drawing on over one thousand metropolitan and regional Australian newspapers published between 1877 and 1899, we identify five overlapping modes of humour: imported metropolitan wit; satire of modern engineering culture; humour grounded in observational uncertainty; scale-based exaggeration and colonial self-comparison; and overt sceptical parody. These modes tracked shifting relationships between observation, interpretation and authority, allowing newspapers to entertain speculative ideas while marking the limits of scientific credibility. At the same time, humorous treatments positioned Australian readers within a global culture of science and modernity. Comparisons with projects such as the Suez and Panama Canals, and with European and American astronomers, aligned colonial audiences with metropolitan discourse, even as local experience with land, water and scale shaped the tone of satire. We demonstrate that Australian newspapers did not passively transmit overseas ideas but actively reworked them through humour, balancing fascination with restraint. More broadly, we show how humour operated as a shared transnational strategy for managing scientific uncertainty at the cultural margins of empire.</p>","language":"eng","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)","short_name":"CC BY 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\r\n\r\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"Mars"},{"word":"Popular astronomy"},{"word":"humour"},{"word":"Colonial astronomy"}],"section":"Article","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5c39q9gx","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Richard","middle_name":"","last_name":"de Grijs","name_suffix":"","institution":"Macquarie University","department":"School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences"}],"date_submitted":"2026-01-24T02:11:35.549000Z","date_accepted":"2026-03-13T17:51:44.313848Z","date_published":"2026-03-20T17:13:00Z","render_galley":{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/jac/article/62196/galley/49099/download/"},"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/jac/article/62196/galley/49099/download/"},{"label":"Mars excitement in Australian newspapers, 1877–1899: Humour and the public negotiation of astronomical knowledge","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/jac/article/62196/galley/49357/download/"}]}