by the late 1800s, the possibility of life on the moon was put to rest. astronomers at that time believed in the kant-laplace hypothesis, which stated that the farthest planets from the sun are the oldest—therefore mars was more likely to have advanced civilizations than venus. subsequent investigations focused on contacting martians. in 1877 giovanni schiaparelli announced he had discovered "canali" ("channels" in italian, which occur naturally, and mistranslated as "canals", which are artificial) on mars—this was followed by thirty years of mars enthusiasm. eventually the martian canals proved illusory.