Beyond Earth

Last week, as the shadow of war hung over Europe, the war planet, baleful red Mars, hung bright and big over the world. Astronomers were particularly interested in the red planet, for (in astronomical figures) Mars was very close to Earth and getting closer every minute. This week the space gap between Earth and Mars dwindles to 36,030,000 miles--the nearest approach in 15 years. Astronomers have been scanning and photographing Mars for weeks, this week will redouble their efforts. But to the old and battered question which still fascinates laymen--does intelligent life on Mars exist--astronomers good-naturedly gave some old answers and a few new ones.

The idea of life on Mars got a big push in 1877 when the Italian Astronomer Schiaparelli* first pictured the vague markings called "canals." Schiaparelli actually called them canali, which means "channels," but was translated "canals." Rivers cut channels, but canals are built by intelligent agents. In the U. S., Astronomer Percival Lowell picked up the canal idea with enthusiasm, claimed he could see them clearly. His theory: the canals were built to bring water from the melting ice of the polar caps, by Martian inhabitants desperately trying to keep their arid lands irrigated. Other astronomers, some with better eyesight than Lowell's, declared that the canals were optical and psychological illusions. Certainly narrow, clear, straight markings which could be called canals do not show up in photographs, appear at their clearest in the drawings of astronomers who believe in their existence.

That there is vegetation on Mars is a fairly plausible assumption. The reddish hue of the planet used to be ascribed to foliage of that color. A more favored explanation nowadays is chemical absorption of oxygen in the soil--that is, oxidation or "rusting" of the Martian terrain. But the dark patches on the planet's surface grow heavier and more distinct in winter, change from blue-green in summer to chocolate brown in winter. These changes strongly suggest vegetation. The potent chemical compound called chlorophyll is present in all the green plants of Earth, but spectroscopic analysis of the Martian patches has failed to disclose chlorophyll there. However, chlorophyll is simply the efficient catalyst which terrestrial plants have developed to enable them to store energy from sunlight, and Martian plants may have evolved a different one.

The existence of animal life on Mars is anybody's guess. Mars is smaller, colder, drier than Earth, has a much thinner atmosphere. Adams and Dunham of Mt. Wilson have shown that the oxygen content of the Martian atmosphere must be less than 1% of the Earth's. Yet among different types of animal life on Earth there are enormous differences in the rate of oxygen intake, and it may be that animals on Mars have adapted themselves to the rare atmosphere by an ultra-slow rate of oxygen consumption. Such animals might be intelligent but they would also be sluggish--probably too sluggish to make plans for invading the Earth.

In spite of laymen's hopes, the question of life on Mars will probably not be solved when Caltech's 200-inch telescope gets into action (perhaps next year). The giant instrument will show Mars larger but not much clearer, on account of atmospheric distortion. The light by which earthlings see Mars is reflected sunlight--and that means light which has passed twice through the Martian atmosphere and once through the Earth's.

If Martians were planning to send the Earth a signal, this week would be the time. If they send a light signal, the beacon will have to be of at least one and one-half trillion candlepower to be visible in Mt. Wilson's 100-inch telescope. No plans were afoot on Earth to communicate with Mars.

Earl Carl Slipher of Lowell Observatory (Flagstaff, Ariz.) has spent more time looking at Mars than any other living astronomer. Some years ago he made photographs showing that there are clouds and storms in the atmosphere of Mars, mostly in the neighborhood of the Martian equator. These are thickest in the early Martian morning, quickly vanish as the sun climbs.

Since there is a better view of Mars this time from the Earth's southern hemisphere than from the northern, Dr. Slipher was last week posted at Harvard's observatory near Bloemfontein in South Africa. He discovered that Solis Lacus, a dark spot on Mars as big as the U. S. and located near the Martian south pole, had assumed a shape never before seen, or at least not in the last half-century. This change of shape, reasoned Old Marster Slipher, could be plausibly ascribed to the growth of fresh vegetation.

*Uncle to Paris Dress-Designer Elsa Schiaparelli.

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