Signaling to Mars

Not since those historic flashes from Mars were received, some years ago, which were probably caused by the reflection of sunlight falling on snow-covered surfaces, and which were promptly interpreted by Tesla and some exuberantly imaginative astronomers as attempts on the part of a hypothetical race of Martians to communicate with this earth of ours, has so much excitement been created as Prof. Pickering's proposal to build a system of mirrors, by means of which light can be rhythmically flashed to Mars. According to Prof. Pickering, a system of reflecting surfaces of adequate area could be constructed at a cost of $10,000,000. If Mars is inhabited by a race more highly developed than we, on the theory that their planet is older than ours, it is argued that they will have sufficient intelligence to devise a means of answering. Prof. R. W. Wood of Johns Hopkins University suggests the simpler and cheaper expedient of employing a huge strip of black cloth, which could be wound from one roller to another, and made to appear and disappear at regular intervals. He suggests the alkali deserts of the Southwest as a suitable place for the experiment. In all probability, neither Prof. Wood nor Prof. Pickering seriously believes that Mars is inhabited.

Would it be worth while to carry out the idea? To us it seems that if the experiment proved a failure, and no answering signal were received from Mars in a reasonable time, the matter would not be conclusively settled. Knowing practically nothing of the conditions on Mars, it would naturally be unsafe to conclude from a failure that the planet is uninhabited, for which reason the habitability of Mars would still engross Flammarion, Lowell, and the host of newspapers that accept their utterances as astronomical gospel. On the other hand, if an answering signal should be received, it would be safe to say that the event would transcend in human interest and importance the most stirring occurrence in the history of the earth, and would inaugurate a new era in the progress of the human race.

Even in the face of this tremendously alluring but exceedingly remote possibility, it seems to us that the $10,000,000 stipulated by Prof. Pickering, and the smaller indeterminate sum required by Prof. Wood, could be more worthily expended, particularly so when we examine the evidence on which the theory of Martian habitability is based.

To the indefatigable studies of Prof. Lowell we owe whatever facts have been gathered that bear at all on the question. But Prof. Lowell's arguments have been riddled by the inexorable logic of geologists, astronomers, and physicists. He is wedded to the Laplacean theory of planetary evolution, although that theory is considered inadequate by many astronomers in the light of recent celestial observations. He assumes that the history of the earth is the history of Mars. He advances the theory that Mars is a planet which has shriveled up during the course of ages; that its surface is one vast parched desert, with the exception of the snow that gathers each winter about the poles; and that the chief concern of the inhabitants, if inhabitants there be, is to conserve this paltry supply of water, and to conduct it, as the snow melts in the spring, to those regions in the equatorial and temperate zones which would still blossom if they were watered. Evidence of this gigantic irrigation system, MAY 8, 1909. which dwarfs anything of the kind that we have ever attempted, Lowell finds in that network of lines which Schiaparelli first discovered, and which were called by him "canals" for want of a better name. As spring and summer approach, the lines slowly creep down from the poles toward the equator, and the dull red or orange of the supposed desert region changes to green. With the advent of autumn and winter, the green resumes its dull red or orange hue, and the lines or "canals" gradually disappear. In these chromatic changes Prof. Lowell sees the seasonal growth and decay of vegetation. His argument for the habitability of our planetary neighbor is based on the undeniably remarkable regularity of the "canals." It is pointed out that they are usually the shortest distance between the points that they connect, and that they meet in groups of three, five, seven, and more in welldefined spots, which he terms "oases," like so many spokes converging in a wheel-hub. In other words, there is nothing haphazard in the arrangement of these canals as Prof. Lowell sees them. They are to him so artificial that they are the symbols of an intelligent race, who have sunk all political and international disputes in the one vital problem of postponing the day when their orb must eventually dry up and they themselves perish.

To reinforce his argument, Prof. Lowell points to the earth. He argues that all terrestrial life emerged from the ocean, although no geologist will positively assert how life did originate on this planet; that the earth was once wrapped in a damp, cloudy envelope, although there is much evidence that moisture, even in geologic times, was of local prevalence only; that the earth is gradually drying up, although all geological evidence points to the fact that the proportion of land to sea has always been a fluctuating quantity, with no marked tendency in either direction; and that deserts on the earth are the harbingers of an ultimate dearth of water extending over the entire earth, although geologists maintain that deserts have always existed. Perhaps the most vigorous attack on Lowell's theories has been conducted by Prof. Andrew E. Douglass, who has studied the "canals" by the methods of experimental psychology, and has shown that there are fundamental defects in the human eye which produce faint canal illusions, and that these have worked serious injury to our observations in the past. It must be confessed, however, that Prof. Douglass has not explained away the seasonal appearance and disappearance of the "canals" and "oases."

Ingenious as Prof. Lowell's explanation of Martian phenomena undoubtedly is, so much of it is based on unsound geological reasoning, and so much on sheer conjecture, that it seems almost futile to make any attempt at signaling in the hope of obtaining something like experimental evidence that Mars is really a living world peopled by intelligent beings.