Mars Committee

On July 2, 1954, Mars will come closer to the earth (40 million miles) than it has in 15 years. Astronomers look forward to this event with enthusiasm, and are already planning their summer's campaign. This month the "Mars Committee," representing leading U.S. observatories and universities, will meet in Washington to see that Mars gets the most thorough going-over (from earthlings) it has ever had.

The science-fiction writers, of course, have long since peopled Mars with subtle civilizations, beautiful women with golden eyes, and half-invisible ships sailing on red-sand seas. Some writers, bored with Mars, have gone on to other planets or even to distant galaxies billions of light-years away, where four-dimensional people (of three or more sexes) think five-dimensional thoughts and are made of inverted matter.

To such imaginative pioneers Mars is not very interesting, but astronomers feel differently. Except for the unrewarding Moon, Mars is the only object in the sky whose surface can be studied. Mercury is too close to the sun, Pluto is too far from the' earth, and the other planets are hidden in clouds. Fascinating things may exist, for instance, beneath the white cloud deck of Venus, but no astronomer hopes to catch a glimpse of them.

Mars floats seminaked, wrapped in its thin blue atmosphere as if in a transparent negligee. Yellow clouds, perhaps of dust, drift across it slowly. The white polar icecaps wax and wane with the swing of the Martian seasons, and its surface changes color, as if with seasonal vegetation.

Brief Visions. Besides these features, which have been photographed, the surface of Mars has a wealth of detail that has never been captured on a photographic plate. Motions of the earth's atmosphere make the disk jiggle and shimmer, and photographs, long exposed, show nothing but vague mottling. But when a trained observer looks at Mars through a telescope, his eye (which is "faster" than a photographic emulsion) stops the motion of the disk for brief instants at rare intervals. During these enchanted moments, Mars looks like a map covered with lines and dots and patches. The vision vanishes in a flash, long before the observer can note what he is seeing.

On many such half-seen visions of Mars is built the theory of its "canals," presumably built by intelligent beings. Skillful and honorable observers have seen a network of fine, straight lines crisscrossing the planet. Others, just as competent, have seen nothing of the sort, and the canal system drawn by one man seldom resembles the system drawn by another. Few modern astronomers accept the canals unreservedly, but most of them admit that there is something extraordinary on the face of Mars. They yearn to know exactly what.

Thousands of Pictures. Little new information about Mars has been collected since its last close approach in 1939. Telescopes have not changed very much since then, but there are more of them, and their accessories have improved considerably. Photographic emulsions are faster, permitting pictures to be taken with shorter exposures and less blurring. Some astronomers plan to use motion picture film this summer, taking thousands of pictures. Their great hope: that one frame at least will catch Mars when it is not jiggling, and show some of its detail unblurred.

Others will dissect its light with improved spectroscopes, thermocouples and photomultiplier tubes. They will search for scraps of information about the Martian atmosphere, its clouds, its climate, its temperature. They may even get hints about its surface material and how much water is frozen in its glittering icecaps.

When the Mars Committee meets, it will apportion the intricate work among its available telescopes, both north and south of the equator. Each observatory will know what is expected of it when Mars draws near. Optimistic astronomers hope that this summer's effort will solve the great mystery of whether there is life on Mars. At any rate, they console themselves, they will have another chance in 1956, when Mars will come even closer: 35 million miles.

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