LIFE ON MARS

Shannon News, 25 May 1926, Page 4

LIFE ON MARS

NEW SUPPORT FOR THE THEORY. At Phoenix, Arizona, photographs of the planet Mars, made in invisible light, substantiate the belief that conditions permit of life existing there in forms similar to those on earth, according ta Da, Andrew E. Douglas, Director of the Steward Observatory, cording to Drs. Andrew E. Douglass, obtained the pictures with plates that had been made sensitive to infra-red light rays, which are longer, than those of the red rays, of the spectrum, and therefore invisitfte to the naked eye. The photographs show' that the dark areas of Mars can only be explained by vegetation, says the ‘‘Morning Post.” They also shOAV- cloudsiat a height of fourteen miles in\the Martian atmosphere, moving at a rate of eighteen miles an hour. It is always difficult on Mars to distinguish between those changes which really occur in the dark markings themselves and those which are due to the varying obscuration of them by overhanging clouds in the Martian atmosphere. The work done at Mount Wilson in 1924, however, led the Avay of arriving at such a means of distinguishing.

Red light passes through an atmosphere. like our own much more readily than blue or white light—witness the redness of the sun at. its rising and its setting, when it shines through a greater thickness, of air and has most of its blue light absorbed. At Mount Wilson they photographed Mars through a red screen and a blue one; the red photographs showed the dark marking far more clearly than the blue ones, and thus shoived that the dark markings were situated actually on the planet’s surface, and that Mars had a definite atmosphere.

By photographing with yet redder light—invisible red light Professor Douglass has confirmed the results of Mount Wilson; by showing that the variations in the- dark markings are recorded on the red photographs he has shown that the variations are not merely due to the passage of overlying clouds. The new photographs, in fact, confirm other recent observations in indicating that the seasonal changes in the dark markings are “real. 1 ’ Among other recent observations which tend to support Professor Douglass’s view that the conditions of Mars and the earth are similar one may mention the following results obtained in 1924. Dr. St. John at Mount Wilson showed spectraseopically the presence of oxygen and water vapour in the Martian atmosphere. Although they seemed to be present in much smaller quantities than on earth, it is probable that the method of their de-N termination definitely underestimated their amounts.

The measurements at Mount Wilson and the Lowell observatory showed that the day-time temperature of the planet was roughly that of a cold bright day on earth. Lastly, Mr. Antoniadi found strong evidence, from the study of Martian clouds, for the presence of cyclones and anti-cyclones, similar to our own, in Mar’s atmosphere.