Astronomical " Cranks."
Sir Robert Ball declares that he has no faith in schemes for communicating with inhabitants in other planets. In thn first place, he does not believe that any beings like ourselves exist anywhere but ou this earth ; and again, he is quite sure that if there were there is no means at present available by which we might convey our thoughts to them. Various have been the schemes of this kind, so he has been telling a correspondent, of Cassell's Saturday Journal, which sanguine inventors have brought under his notice. One man proposed that we should startle the suppositious inhabitants of Mars by alternately lighting and turning out all the Btreet lamps in Loudon. Such a manifestation wonld possibly be visible to any human beings in Mars who happened to be on the lookout towards these regions with a telescope ; but what interpretation conld they possibly put upon it ? The idea of waving some sort of signal has been moored. According to Sir Eobert Ball, if a flag as large as Ireland placed on the end of a pole five hundred miles long, were waved on tin** earth, it would be just visible from Maw. The astronomical " crank," in his opinion, is a rare gpecies nowaday**, but he is not altogether exunct, and astronomers still suffer from him at times.
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Bibliographic details
Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 78, 28 September 1895, Page 3
Word Count
222Astronomical " Cranks." Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 78, 28 September 1895, Page 3
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