WHY THERE IS LIFE IN MARS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18534, 17 July 1922, Page 9

WHY THERE IS LIFE IN MARS

i ! THE CLUE OF THE PLANET’S COLOUR CHANGES. ' If any Martian could look at us I through a telescope, and view the earth 'as we view Mars, he would observe how the color of our earth changes with the I ! seasons. He would see how the ver-1 idure of spring, the bridal time, gives I way to the gold and purple of fruition I time, and that to the blackness and snowy whiteness of the season of sleep and death. ‘‘Vegetation!” he would say. And, going on to argue that the i animal is the corollary of the vegetable, he would teach his children that our' earth is peopled by gods, men or beasts. | That is how our professors argue. about Mars, and come to a triumphant ! conclusion that it is habitable. For {the colors of Mars, as viewed through aj {telescope, change seasonably, owing to] {vegetation. Wo can almost see the! J Martian vegetables- breaking into leaf.' 687 DAVS A YEAR. | Through a. telescope Mars appears as { a globe, crowned by white spots —Polar .caps—ami spread with blue-green patches—areas of vegetation—on an {orange ground—desert—and covered by ■a network of lines stretching from pole | to pole, each line joining another which ; connects with 5 third, and so on over {the entire world—the famed canals. In Mars the day is about 40 minutes longer than ours. The seasons are wonderfully like ours, but in length nearly double, the year consisting of 687 of our days. The Polar caps melt in the summer to form again in the winter. Melting, they are bordered jby blue belts—water, but not much. ; There are no mountains and no great ! seas. But there, are clouds, and often i ■dust storms. The climate is cold, but | i most of the surface is above freezing point. The sky is. usually perfectly j clear, like that of a dry, desert land. The weather is as wanton as with us, and successive Mai tian years bring early and late seasons. These are some of the main articles of the Martian creed as they are set i forth by the American astronomer Professor Lowell in his work, “Mars.” OLDER THAN I HE EARTH. 1 The blue-green regions, he tells us, i were formerly thought to be seas, but! : they cannot bo seas, because they! ‘ change in tint according to seasons, and • ! show certain permanent marks. The, .color comes and goes, as that of vege- ’ tat ion would in growth and decay. 1 \ a.st areas change from blue-green to ■ ochre. Once it was thought that tliis | meant the transference of thousands of ! tons of some substance. Now it is put [down to the quiet turning of the leaf j under autumn’s fiery touch. Vegetation would mean carbonic acid, oxyIgen and nitrogen in the Martian atI mosphere. It seems that Mars, like the moon, has passed through the stage at which our earth finds itself to-day. with oceans and seas, and we may follow it to a waterless age. Our oceans have been dwindling since archaic times. In Mars we may see a mirror of our own future. It is the brick-red tracks that give Mars its fiery tint to the naked eye. i Through the telescope thev look just I like our deserts, the Sahara or the l [Painted Desert of Arizona, that land of lambent saffron. Thiee-lifths of the i whole surface ol the planet is desert. I hero are 55,(XX),000 square miles of Mars. Travellers of our own Saharas .can best picture what Mill’s is like, and . what its waterless condition must mean ■ Io the Martian there must be terrible significance in the word desort. He must need water very • badly, [since his only supply, apart from what I may he in the air, comes from the melt-| Img of the snowcaps. Naturally .- he I , would make, every effort (o build lines ol water communication. Knowing his conditions, we should expect his i country to bo a network of canah. The inference, says Professor Lowell, that j the canals are artificial is “forthright.” CANALS 30 MILES WIDE. : They run for thousands of miles unswervingly, as far relatively as from .London to Bombay. They suggest a I spider’s web seen against the grass of a (spring morning, a mesh of line reticui lated lines that compass the globe, of | uniform width, exceeding tenuity, and I great length, and as dead straight as if : laid down by rule and compass. No ' planet shows the like. They range | from a. mile or two in width to thirty j miles, and one, named Eunienides- ■ Orcus. is 3540 miles long. Where the (lines intersect, round dots appear oases, measuring about a hundred miles across. 'J he aim of the canal system seems to be to tap the snow caps ioi iho water there let loose semiannually and distribute it. All along tho canals vegetation flourishes in season, fed by the water, vegetation that fades away when the first frosts and snows are due. The presence of the flora is ground for suspecting a fauna. Vegetable and animal are coexistent on earth, where a scanty flora means a poor fauna. Anin‘‘.? eat plants, and really exist, in the I ultimate, on nothing else. Without plants animals would soon cease to exist. All our life conies back to vegetation. And plants are beholden to animals for processes that iu turn make their own life possible—it is the lowlv worm that makes the soil. .THE MARTIANS; That life with us came out of the sea finds a possible parallel in the Martian seas that once existed. Martian life then had the “wherewith” to begin I and having air and water it had the. ‘wherewith” to continue. AV by is it, if that life exists, the astronomers never see a live Martian? Possibly because he is poo small. From a great height no animal life would be seen on our earth, though vegetation might be visible; flora usually overtoos fauna. But the works of animals can be seen, though we ourselves have nothing to compare to the Martian’s canals. Professor Lowell concludes: “Mars is largQ enough to have forgotten vegetation and small enough to be already old. All that we know of the physical state of the planet points to the possibility ol both vegetable and animal life existing there, and. furthermore, that this hie should be of a relativelv high eider j s possible. Nothing contradicts this. I hat Mars is inhabited by beings ol some sorts or other we may consider certain. —‘.John o’ Lorfdon.”