THE PLANET MARS.
ASTRONOMERS OBSERVATIONS.
“The ‘canals’ on the planet Mars are a hallucination and anyone who possesses a back garden can prove it,” Sir James Jeans, the eminent astronomer, (.old the Royal Institution. lie explained that when tired eyes strained at a l’aintly-illuminated piclure they see things that are not there. The longer they look the more they see.
Sir James said that an amateur astronomer illuminated a map of Mars from which he had removed the “canal” markings and placed it at the bottom of iiis garden. Then he asked his friends to draw everything that they saw.
Many of them made markings similar to the supposed canals. A similar experiment was tried with school children, who were unaware that they were expected to see “canals.” They, too, made similar markings.
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Matamata Record, Volume XVI, Issue 1447, 3 August 1933, Page 7
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133THE PLANET MARS. Matamata Record, Volume XVI, Issue 1447, 3 August 1933, Page 7
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