MARS.

Northern Advocate, 19 December 1911, Page 2

MARS.

THE DYING PLANET,

As the Martian year is composed of GB6 days, each pole is exposed to the sun's radiations during a period of more than 11 months, so that the snow deposited during one winter is almost wholly melted before the fol-

lowing winter,

A pocket barometer in Mars would register a pressure of a little over 10 centimetres. On the terrestrial globe, at sea-level, the atmospheric pressure is 76 centimetres. On the top of the Eiffel Tower the pressure is lowered 3 centimetres; on a mountain 1000 /metres high a barometer marks barely 63 centimetres. At a height of 2000 metres it marks 60 centimetres; at a little over 5 kilometres 38 centimetres, and at 11 kilometres only 19 centimetres. That altitude is the highest ever attained in any balloon.

At that altitude the atmospheric pressure is so slight that the human organism, habituated to the bottom of the aerial ocean, where it supports a total pressure of 32,000 pounds, is conscious of something nearly insupportable, breathing is very difficult, and the blood escapes to the surface, producing hemorrhages.

On the planet Mars the atmospheric pressure corresponds to the pressure that might be registered on a high terrestrial plateau at an altitude of 17 kilometres. No human being could live at such an altitude; no mammal, no bird of the organic structure of the earthly animal, could resist such slight pressure. Water could not remain liquid. \

That is what is taking place on Mars. In the daytime the atmosphere becomes impregnated with humidity, especially in the polar regions, where the sun is always at work, slowly melting the thin sheets of rime. The humidity, spreading very slowly, reaches all regions round about, carried by, light winds. But as soon as the sun sets the heat received during the day is dissipated by radiation. The thermometer drops rapidly, in some parts it may fall to 100 degrees below zero. Then water is deposited on the ground in the form of white frost. In the higher strata of the atmosphere cloud-like masses formed'of fine ice-needles slowly revolve. Like the clouds of vhe earth's atmosphere, they attain great altitudes. Then, when seen from earth through the telescope, they appear on the borders of the disc of the planet, with all the characteristics of the protuberances of the sun. The clouds, massed and carried on by their drivers, - the winds, fcave• been taken tor signals supposed to have been sent to the dwellers of earth by the Mar-

tians,

The variations of color common to the different Martian seasons are explained by many facts; the low plains and broad valleys of Mars are coverarmosphere. There, on the low plain? Ed with vegetation which, presumably, is maintained by the humidity of the and in the valleys, water vapour most naturally settles. What is the nature of the vegetation that develops so profusely and so rapidly Are the great sheets of verdue forests or

swamps? anff what are the animals

that live in them

Earth's astronomers (says "Harper's Weekly") know nothing beyond the fact that, if Mars is of a formation more recent than the formation of the terrestrial globe, its evolution must have been more rapid, because it is so small. Mars is an older world than the carth —a world that represents the intermediate state between that oi the earth and that of the moon. The phenomena on Mars, now under the observation of earth's astronomers, are the last manifestations of a dying life. Slowly, very slowly, time is doing its work. Mars is dying of cold, the anaesthetic that benumbs the worlds and steeps them in the sleep in which they die.