THE PLANET MARS.

Shannon News, 15 July 1927, Page 2

THE PLANET MARS.

A NEW THEORY. NEW YORK, June 20. A year’s study of innumerable photographs has revealed to the scientists of the University of California that the planet Mars has an atmosphere and much vegetation. While the assurance of the presence of atmosphere makes tenable the theory that there is life there, the learned professors say that the man in the street knows as much about that as they do. Instead of being canals, as hitherto supposed, the dark lines across the planet, the professors say, are caused by vegetation marking low valleys or volcanic cracks in the surface. The fact that the lines vary in width from time to time is due, it is stated, to seasonal changes of temperature. Professor Robert Trumpler, astronomer at the Lick Observatory, who made the announcement, has discovered also that Mars has an equatorial dimeter of 4133 miles instead of 4300. Bankruptcies in the Dominion.apparently reached the “peak" number last week, when no fewer than 25 were recorded in the New Zealand Gazette, the districts affected being: Auckland 4 i Hamilton 3, Gisborne 1, New Plymouth 1, Hawera 2, Wellington 2, Christchurch 8, Timaru 1, Dunedin 1, 1 and Invercargill 2,