Science Looks To Radio Now To Pick Up Mars; London Experiment By Mansfield Robinson Reawakens Interest In Planet Neighbors

Hugo Gernsback Believes Short Wave Length Will Do the Trick Eventually. Other Methods Figured Too Costly — $12,000,000 to Rig Up Apparatus for a Rocket Shot at Moon. Marconi’s Report on Mysterious Signals in Air.

Time When Scientists, Including Long Island Station, Are Alert for Message From Mars

Can man communicate with Mars?

Has Mars been trying to communicate with the earth?

Are there intelligent beings on Mars and Venus?

The answer to all of these questions is YES — if you locate the right authorities and interrogate them. Other authorities answer PERHAPS. It is difficult to locate any one who is an authority on the subject who will say NO.

To occultists and spiritists Mars, Venus, Jupiter and the other planets are merely next-door neighbors to be visited in the astral body with no more difficulty than taking a stroll down the street. Sirius and the Pleiades are just a little further stroll, but really not difficult of access if you really know how.

But the principal interest attaches to more material efforts to communicate with our planetary neighbors, and this problem has held the attention of some of our leading scientists and engineers.

Mansfield Robinson’s Experiment.

Then there are borderline cases such as that of Dr. Mansfield Robinson of London, who this week tried to establish communication with Mars by means of radio. Dr. Robinson has been in communication with an inhabitant of Mars through occult channels and then turned to radio to extend the conversation. According to Dr. Robinson, he succeeded in getting a reply to his message, but he was unable to decode it. Whether this rates as a two-way communication is undecided.

Radio, however, is the agent in which greatest faith is now placed for putting our earthbound inhabitants in touch with the beings on our sister planets.

Gernsback Is Confident.

Hugo Gernsback, president of the Experimenter Publishing Company, a prolific writer on scientific problems of an advanced character and inventor of numerous electrical devices, is quite optimistic that by means of radio waves of very short wave length, probably two meters or less, we will be able to get signals off the earth and then to Mars. He has also proposed a half dozen other methods by means of which signals can be sent to our neighboring planet.

There is also the problem of interplanetary communication in person — an activity that comes under the heading of astronautics. There is an annual prize of 5,000 francs awaiting the person who writes the best essay on this subject. It is offered through the Societe Astronomique in Paris, by Robert Esnault-Pelterie, a successful designer of light engines and airplanes.

$12,000,000 to Shoot Rocket at Moon.

Serious discussion has been under way for several years on the possibility of using rockets to reach the moon or other planets. It is well within the possibilities of practical engineering practice to produce the required projector of the rocket and to build the rocket, but very few scientists and the advance guard of engineers have $12,000,000 lying around loose in their pockets, and that is the estimated cost of taking the first shot at the moon.

Most of the projects outlined for communicating with Mars — on a scientific basis — involve heavy costs and that is the main reason they have not been attempted.

Occult Phase of the Situation.

Radio is the most popular suggestion; immense searchlights or mirrors come next, and third come various plans for establishing markings on the face of the earth. Occultists do not deign to stoop to such ponderable paraphernalia. Through purely occult means they claim they can mount an ultra human plane of existence and by methods known only to the masters transport themselves to any of the trans-spatial resorts. In fact, it is their belief that many of the influences that are guiding the human race to its destiny are directed from starry places as far distant as Sirius. More of the occult phase of the matter later.

Percival Lowell’s Theory.

Percival Lowell, the famous astronomer who devoted a lifetime to the study of Mars, was convinced that the markings on the surface of the planet, which he had observed changed to some extent from year to year, were canals. If canals, they indicated that there exists on the planet a race of intelligent beings capable of carrying on vast engineering enterprises that would make the building of the Panama Canal seem like the work of a child digging in the beach sand. And as to the necessity for these canals. This was explained in quite simple fashion. Mars, being a smaller planet than the earth, does not have as strong a gravitational pull and is therefore unable to hold on to as dense an atmosphere. The reduced atmospheric pressure makes it easier for water to evaporate and as a vapor it then escapes into space to be lost to the planet forever. In order to support life water is necessary and therefore all water must be conserved.

Lowell had the support of a large contingent of the astronomers for his theories, but there were others who were unable to see the markings which he saw and which he mapped in great detail. His work gave great impetus to the ideas of those who saw no reason why other planets having conditions somewhat similar to those on the earth should not support life.

Mysterious Signals on Air.

It was about a score of years ago that Lowell did his greatest work on Mars and it was about this same time that radio, then known as wireless, was just beginning to attract attention. Pioneers were sending and trying to receive signals with rather crude apparatus. Ears were glued to telephone headsets while wireless operators listened for the signals that sometimes came and oftener did not come from the distant station. The air then was not filled with signals and broadcast waves as it is now.

The operators listened in silence hour after hour.

During the silent watches of the night, however, strange signals would be heard in the receivers. Their source was a mystery. The wireless sending stations would disclaim responsibility for the signals. They could not be traced to any earthly source.

William Marconi, the famous inventor, heard such signals on many occasions. In 1920 he issued a statement on his observations. He said:

Marconi Tells of Strange Sounds.

“We occasionally get very queer sounds and indications, which might come from somewhere outside the earth. We have had them both in England and in America. The Morse signal letters occur with much greater frequency than others, but we have never yet picked up anything that could be translated into a definite message. The fact that the signals have occurred simultaneously at New York and London with identical intensity seems to indicate that they must have originated at a very great distance. We have not yet the slightest proof of their origin. They are sounds. They may be signals. We do not know. They are not static and we have nothing to guide us at present as to how the signals are caused.

“We do not get them unless we set up a special wave length, very much greater than the wave length ordinarily used. Sometimes there may be a long wait before we hear anything, or we may hear these sounds in twenty minutes or half an hour. They occur when we are using a wave length of approximately 100 kilometers, which is three or four times the length used for commercial purposes.

“They might conceivably be due to some natural disturbance at a great distance; for instance, an eruption of the sun, causing electrical disturbances.”

Other Planets Trying to Talk to Us?

Asked whether attempts were possibly being made by another planet to communicate, Signor Marconi said:

“I would not rule out the possibility of this, but there is no proof. We must investigate the matter much more thoroughly before we venture upon a definite explanation.”

He added that the mysterious sounds are not confined to any particular diurnal period. “They are equally frequent by day and night,” he said.

At that time Hugo Gernsback said:

“The intelligent creatures who know how to send radio messages across a chasm of 50 million miles admittedly know a few things about the game themselves. They may have sent these messages for centuries upon centuries, waiting for us to grow up and finally hear them. Thus the Martians and probably the Venusians are surely on an infinitely higher plane of civilization than ourselves. And we with our twenty-odd years experience in radio — don’t we really look foolish in the extreme?

“But to make the point clear, if we do get messages, they probably will not all be in dots and dashes. They may come in musical notes, the same as we transmit radio band music from a phonograph over hundreds of miles, or they may come in the actual voice (providing these beings talk like we do); in other words, radio telephone messages. But time will tell. In the meanwhile we shall wait a bit longer.”

Long before this time Nikola Tesla, while working in his laboratory in Colorado Springs, observed peculiar manifestations which were interpreted as extraplanetary signals. At that time Tesla was working with stationary electrical waves with which he was able to charge the whole earth and make it vibrate electrically.