Messages from Mars to Earth?

WHAT PROFESSOR LOWELL OBSERVED.

A BRILLIANT PROJECTION

Conditions of Mars Are to a Certain Extent Favorable to Human Life, and Many Think the Planet is Inhabited.

W. E. G. Fisher in London Mail.

Is Mars inhabited by intelligent beings who are trying to signal to us?

This question is again brought to the front by the announcement that Professor Lowell — who of all living astronomers knows most about the Red Planet — has just observed a brilliant projection from the edge of its disk. The brilliant imaginations of Mr. H. G. Wells have familiarized us all with the possibilities of life on Mars, and no one who has read "The War of the Worlds" can help shuddering slightly when he remembers that just such a projection indicated the commencement of that terrifying invasion. Let us be reassured. Astronomers will tell us that, however realistic Mr. Wells's story seemed, it is practically impossible that mankind should ever have to fight for its life against a Martian arms, and the hypothesis that what Professor Lowell saw was the flash caused by the firing of a huge gun at the earth may be put out of court.

It is with less certainty, however, that we can decide that the signal theory is equally impossible. Indeed, one can hardly go so far as to say that it is entirely inadequate to explain this projection, though the improbability of its being intended for our notice and produced by quasi-human agency is considerable. In the first place, astronomers admit that the existence of life somewhat akin to our own on Mars is highly probable.

In the nature of things, there is no ground for supposing that the earth should be the only planet on which evolution has resulted in producing our noble selves. Setting aside the hypothesis of a special creation and a Divine reason for favoring the earth beyond any other planet — which may be true, but is not amenable to discussion by the light of that ordered science — we can all see at once that, if all the planets are but cooled and hardened portions of the same original nebula, their real marvel would be not that life should exist on other planets, but that it should have come into being on the earth alone.

Similar causes must be assumed to produce similar effects, though man is too apt to think that an exceptional interest and merit attach to the inconsiderable planet that has had the honor of bearing him.

If, then, we must assume the probability that there are "other worlds than ours," other sentient beings within the limits of our system, where are we to look for them?

Every argument points to Mars as the most likely place. The outer planets are too far from the sun for such life as we know to maintain itself upon them; in the remote coldness of Neptune or Uranus only algae or bacteria could live with any comfort, and imagination refuses to conceive a civilized society or typhoid germs. Jupiter is almost certainly still in a state of red-heat, and one might as well try to live in a Dutch oven as where Mercury swims in the sunbeams. The minor planets, those disjected members of a "planet that never was," are barred by our knowledge of physics, which tells us that not even the largest of them can possess any vestiges of an atmosphere; while the smaller ones are so ill-provided with gravitating force than an ordinary man's jump would take him away into infinite space. It would be rash, perhaps, to assert that life without an atmosphere is impossible, but we cannot conceive it.

There remain, then, only our two nearest neighbors, Mars and Venus, as the possible homes of such life as we can imagine to exist in conditions not too utterly adverse.

There are grave difficulties in the way of studying Venus from this point of view, and attention has been concentrated on Mars, where some eminent astronomers believe that they have found evidence for the existence of intelligent beings. The evidence is rather thin, indeed, consisting mainly in the demonstration that Mars is suited for the existence of life. In the first place, Mars possesses an atmosphere, much more rarified than our own — its pressure is probably not more than two or three pounds to the square inch, corresponding to a barometric reading of five or six inches of mercury — but still conceivably adequate to support life that had been developed in it, though a man transported thither would equally be unable to survive without a diving costume.

This is proved not only by spectroscopic observations which have shown the presence of an atmosphere containing water vapor, but by the regular waxing and waning of the white patches of snow that surround the Martian poles. In other physical respects Mars is essentially similar to the earth, and it requires no great stretch of imagination to see how the human constitution could be modified to live there.

So far the evidence for life on Mars confines itself to asserting its possibility. Direct evidence of its presence has been sought, and, as some bold, with success. This consists mainly in the apparently regular change of certain features of the planet's surface, which is attributed by Mr. Lowell and others to the action of intelligent beings. These are the well known "canals," seen in the best telescopes as a network of lines on the Martian surface, which at certain seasons of the year appear to be duplicated.

Some observers maintain that they are simply an optical delusion — that the wish to see them is father to the observation. But a little positive evidence in such matters outweighs much negative; if two or three men have seen a thing, it is a poor answer that twenty or thirty have not. Hence we are entitled to consider, at least as a working hypothesis, the theory that these singular marks are due to some vast engineering or agricultural operations on Mars.

If, then, we assume the probability of sentient life on Mars, it is an easy step to suppose that its inhabitants may wish to communicate with other planets, just as we should dearly like to communicate with them. Hence it is often supposed that any remarkable appearance on Mars may be a signal to our address. The chief difficulties in thus interpreting such an observation as Mr. Lowell has just made are twofold. The first is that the gigantic size of such a signal for us to perceive it seems to bar the possibility of its artificial nature.

Sir Robert Ball says that signaling from Mars to the earth would need a flag the size of Ireland or an electric light as big as London. There is no great exaggeration in such a calculation. Probably the projection which has just been observed is due to sunlight striking a cloud at a height of some twenty miles in the Martian atmosphere; according to the received explanation of similar observations made four or five times within the last generation. But if the Martians are really so far advanced in engineering as to be able to carry out irrigation works on the vast scale that the canals imply, they ought to be capable of making such signals; if money was no object, even a terrestrial engineer could arrange a system of electric lights that would send a flash as far as Mars.

The second and more powerful objection to the signal theory is that no intelligent message has been sent. Whence it is more natural to conclude that these projections are merely accidental cloud reflections. Before we accept the assertion that Mars is signaling, we must wait for something that can be twisted into a message, be it as elementary as the "one, two, three" which Mr. Tesla once found arriving from outer space on his wireless telegraphic receiver.

What we have recently learned of the possibilities of wireless telegraphy, or of that still subtler form of radiation which is vaguely perceived in the phenomena of telepathy and thought transference, suggests that when Mars tries to communicate with us it will not be by mere heliography or "flag wagging." We are daily getting wireless messages from the sun; why should not a sentient being send us one from Mars some day? But there is no use in being too previous, and one must not conclude that there is no ground for supposing that what Mr. Lowell saw was a signal from Mars, though it would be highly unscientific to deny the possibility of such an explanation.