IS THERE LIFE ON MARS?
When Mars was as close as it could come this year, which was last winter, Drs Walter S. Adams and Theodore Dunham, jun., of the Mount Wilson Observatory, made another attempt to find water
vapour in the atmosphere with the spectrograph. It is hard to separate the evidences of water vapour in our atmosphere from any there may be on a neighbouring planet. Still, Adams and Dunham, estimated that lines with only 5 per cent, the intensity of terrestrial lines should have been visible with their method. But none was seen. Water vapour is essential to life as we
know it. Does it follow that there r > is no life on Mars? Drs Adams and Dunham do not raise the question. r They regard their work as incon- r . elusive, because their observations were made near the equatorial >0 regions of Mars. The white-capped v poles would have been better, but it ' ■ was difficult to make observations on them because of the low position ,r of the planet.
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Otago Daily Times, Issue 23350, 16 November 1937, Page 5
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173IS THERE LIFE ON MARS? Otago Daily Times, Issue 23350, 16 November 1937, Page 5
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