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Is there life on Mars? By the dawn of the 20th century, that question had already been settled – at least for Madame Clara Goguet Guzman: of course there was. The real question was whether there was life elsewhere in the universe. And to answer that question, the Académie des Sciences in Paris announced the Guzman Prize on 17 December 1900. Madame Guzman stumped up the 100,000 francs for the prize in memory of her son, Pierre, who rather fancied himself as an amateur astrologer. To win, all you had to do was prove you'd had a chat with aliens. "[The winner will be] the person of whatever ...

Madame Guzman didn't get her chat with aliens when she announced the Guzman Prize 115 years ago today. Despite offering a 100,000 franc reward, nobody could come up with the technology to communicate with distant worlds. (Mars didn't count it was deemed too easy.)But in some ways, the Ansari X Prize was its successor. Unveiled in May 1996, the $2.5m prize (which grew to $10m) would be awarded to anyone who could design and build "a reliable, reusable, privately-financed, manned spaceship capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometres above the Earth's surface twice within two weeks". The ...